The impact that Kyle Ambrogi had on the world could be measured in some form by the size of the crowd that attended his funeral Monday.
The chapel of St. John Neumann Church in Bryn Mawr was packed to the walls, and on three sides of the building mourners craned their necks around every open door and window they could find.
They came to pay their last respects to the 21-year-old Wharton senior who committed suicide in his Havertown, Pa., home last Monday night. Friends said Ambrogi had been suffering from depression.
Some mourners came from Havertown, the small Philadelphia suburb where Ambrogi grew up. Some came from St. Joseph's Preparatory School at 18th and Girard in North Philadelphia, where Ambrogi went to high school.
Many came from University City, from Franklin Field where Ambrogi played his last football game for Penn on Oct. 8.
As the mourners prayed, they listened to a soulful rendition of "Amazing Grace," sung by a choir with accompaniment from a piano and a lone trumpeter.
In his homily, Rev. David Sauter -- who was president of St. Joe's Prep when Ambrogi was a student there -- praised Ambrogi for his character, his academic talent and his football prowess.
People like Ambrogi "tell us that we do not settle for anything less than our best," Sauter said. "You knew the gifts God had granted him were not taken for granted."
When the service ended, mourners filed out past the neatly trimmed trees and hedges around the chapel.
Ambrogi's casket was carried out of the church by high school and college teammates who had blocked for him as he carried the ball down the field.
This time they cleared a path toward a far less celebratory end zone.
