Luke Reisinger had every reason to move from Georgia to Louisiana.
The undeclared LSU sophomore loved anything outdoors — fishing, hunting, working on his farm — and he loved to celebrate with a fervor reflective of a good day’s work. He carried an air of invincibility that assured all around him nothing wrong would happen with the 6-foot-tall Reisinger at the helm.
Reisinger died Feb. 4 from a mixture of alcohol and prescription medications including Suboxone and potentially Xanax, which he consumed while partying in the days before. Two weeks later, his father, Michael Reisinger, reached out to The Daily Reveille from Reisinger’s hometown of Conyers, Ga., to tell the story of his oldest son.
And it’s a story almost any student could relate to:
Reisinger had a younger brother and two sisters; he loved hunting, fishing and basketball; he made above-average grades in high school, though he could have tried harder; he loved playing Super Smash Bros. and Halo online with his friends back home; and although his friends say he wasn’t necessarily the wildest of them all, Reisinger loved to party and sought a good time with a confident optimism.
“He was a bit of a redneck, so it was a big adventure to go to Louisiana,” Reisinger’s father joked, recalling the trip to LSU orientation with his son — particularly the part where they got lost enjoying themselves in New Orleans. “He had an adventurous side. He liked the athletics there [at LSU], but he also liked the people he met there.”
The Reisingers received a call at 5:30 a.m. from the Baton Rouge Police Department the Monday after the Super Bowl, notifying them that Reisinger had died. It is not known whether he died Sunday night or Monday morning. Reisinger had partied Saturday night until 9 a.m. on Super Bowl Sunday, when he went to sleep. A notoriously hard sleeper, Reisinger did not wake up for the game and could not be awoken the next morning.
Reisinger had borrowed some money from his parents Saturday night, which wasn’t unusual for him, and bought some beer. According to investigators, Reisinger’s friends said he had taken Suboxone and maybe some Xanax.
“His best friend checked on him after midnight to see if he was OK, and he had passed away,” Michael Reisinger said. “It affects all people differently — no person can say what one person’s amount is that’s going to cause something like this.”
Around 8 a.m., Reisinger made his last phone call, dialing his high school sweetheart Kristin Rodgers, a sophomore at Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina.
“It’s kind of a hard relationship to describe — he always called me his future wife. I always played hard to get. I just liked to mess with him,” Rodgers laughed. “He was my best friend, and he probably would’ve been my boyfriend if I hadn’t played so hard to get.”
Rodgers said Reisinger would joke that one day they would get married, buy a yacht and move to Australia.
“He says stuff like that, but he totally could’ve made it happen,” she said with a laugh.
Rodgers said Reisinger often texted her late at night, and sometimes while intoxicated, though such phone calls are not out of the ordinary for most students.
Even in his “altered” state, Rodgers said Reisinger expressed concerns for his former high school teacher and mentor Darrell Huckaby’s struggle with cancer when he called that Sunday morning.
“Growing up with him in high school, stuff like this isn’t considered that weird. I got phone calls all the time where people were altered and didn’t think to worry all the time,” she said. “No one makes a big deal out of it. … Stuff like this is regular; It happens all the time, and he wasn’t even the wildest of the people we went to high school with.”
Reisinger’s friends and the connections he made with them had special places in the hearts of his parents.
“I’d hoped he would marry her some day,” his father said about Rodgers.
Reisinger was also frequently in contact with his best friend Cody Dailey, a sophomore at the University of Georgia.
“We hung out a lot; we called each other when we woke up pretty much every day,” Dailey said. “He was always going to have a good time no matter what he was doing — always had a big smile on his face.”
Dailey recalled days out on Lake Oconee with Reisinger and two other friends, “shooting the shit and talking about nothing and everything at the same time.”
Dailey last heard from Reisinger about two weeks before his death. Reisinger left a funny voicemail about the two of them hanging out, Dailey said.
“I haven’t deleted it, and I don’t plan on deleting it for a while,” he said.
Even with the devastating loss of a child or a friend, Reisinger’s family and friends know he was no exception to the rule when it came to drugs and alcohol use — as are other college students. He may have gotten busted in high school getting drunk or “smoking pot,” but as his friends would note, the 19-year-old did not party at a rate unusual for a college student.
Everyone with anything to say about Reisinger would swear by his unwavering good nature and magnetic sociability, and his loyalty was both unflagging and unbiased.
“He was so much more than that, as are most people,” said his mother Wanda Reisinger through tears. “Yes, he made choices and he did things he shouldn’t have done, but it doesn’t define who he was. Everyone thinks it’s not going to happen to them, and that’s normal and it’s a natural thought process. It’s just not true.”
It was with this in mind that the Reisingers sought to have their son’s story told.
“If it could help one young person make a decision at any point in their life, then I would like to share that story,” Michael Reisinger said. “It’s like taking the worst blow in your life and turning it around to help someone.”
“It’s like taking the worst blow in your life and turning it around to help someone.”
