Joe Paterno died Sunday morning. The media and maybe some of you think that Penn State thought he was a god. I can't speak for everyone, but I know that wasn't what I thought. In fact, I thought just the opposite. He was a man, a man with flaws and not so great fashion sense. He was also a man of loyalty, integrity, and other simple and sometimes forgotten values.
In 1982, I went to University Park as a freshman by some miracle, 'cause my 1060 SAT score (which was not great, but not horrible at the time) sure didn't make me a shoo in to get in at Main Campus. I grew up in Pittsburgh, so I knew how big college football could be. I, like many other freshman, was so excited to be part of the first home football game. I have no idea who we played, but I do remember the feeling of being in that crowd and the rush of watching the team run out of the tunnel with Joe at the head of the line. I don't remember if we won that game, but I do remember it was a great season overall. I remember rushing the field after beating Nebraska in the last seconds of the game and nearly getting knocked over by a Nebraska player, by far the biggest person I'd ever seen in my life. I remember winning the Sugar Bowl that year. Jody, Brenda, and I walked out to Hills Plaza from our dorm hoping to see the team come back. We ended up hitching a ride back to campus and climbing onto the roof of the football building so we could see the team come home. We sat over the door and waved at them all as they came through, even JoePa. He just looked at us like a worried dad and shook his head.
After my freshman year, I didn't go to as many football games, sometimes the weather kept me away, sometimes the studies kept me away, sometimes the thought of getting pelted with marshmallows kept me away (those things hurt after a few throws). But, it was Penn State, it was hard not to hear the roar from the stadium on a Saturday afternoon and be caught up in it, even if you didn't go to the game. And JoePa was always there.
Once I ventured beyond campus and made some friends amongst the "townies," I discovered that JoePa lived in a little ranch style house near a park in town. And even after winning two national championships during my tenure at Penn State, (yes, that means I was on the 5-year plan) they didn't move out of that house. It's the same house Joe did his last interview from a couple weeks ago. The man made lots of money being a winning football coach, but chose to give that money to Penn State rather than buy an ostentatious home. Perhaps Tom Brady could take a page from that playbook. (Brady just bought a home for something like 40 million dollars.) Once I made friends with some of the players, I discovered that they would often stop at the house to visit with Coach and SuePa. She would make them bologna sandwiches, shoot the breeze, and talk about school. I heard the story of Bob White and how Joe and Sue insisted that he read 12 books and write reports on them (graded by Sue) before coming to Penn State to play football. My brother had classes with Bob and said he was a great student and a nice guy. There a litany of players that can tell stories about how he touched their lives.
I only saw the man up close once, though. I was a freshman or a sophomore, I can't remember exactly. I lived in South Halls, the dorms closest to downtown. My hall, Hoyt Hall, was just across College Avenue from Bell's Greek Pizza and just down the hill from where the football complex sat at the time. On a spring day, some friends and I attempted to study spread out on the hill behind my dorm. I wish I could remember if it was Jody and Brenda with me, or maybe Adrienne and Lori, but I don't. I just remember looking up and seeing Joe Paterno cutting across the hillside close-by. I guess he was headed to the pizza place on the corner. One of us called out, "JoePa!" he stopped and turned toward us.
"How's school going, girls?" he asked.
We all told him it was fine. He asked what we were studying and we told him. We talked for a minute or so, I don't even remember about what.
He turned to go and he said, "Study hard, now."
And he walked toward town.
Now, that's not a great story. It's probably not even an interesting story or particularly inspiring story. It was not a conversation that was life changing or filled with wisdom. To be honest, it's a moment that I sort of forgot about until the "Penn State Scandal" broke. But I believe this little moment revealed a little of Joe's character. Here was this man, successful, at the top of his field, revered by people at the university and all over the US, and he took the time to stop to talk to some college kids sitting on a hillside. We had nothing to offer him. We weren't influential. We didn't have parents that were influential. He could have waved and kept walking and we would have been thrilled. But he took the time to ask us how we were and to point us to what we were there for, education.
And let me be clear, I realize he was just a man. The press didn't like him particularly because he had no patience for some of their questions. He sometimes came off as arrogant. He had not embraced the technological age. I am sure that being the driven man he was, he wasn't easy to live with as a husband and a father. He freely admitted he's made mistakes. Haven't we all? I've made some doozies, just ask my friends and family. And there's others that no one knows about, times I took the easier, safer way or the way that made me look or feel good. I believe it says somewhere, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and something about taking a plank out of your own eye. Criticism has been he was about money or about protecting the football program. To that I say, if he was about money, he would have taken one of the many offers he had over the years to go elsewhere. If he was only about football alone, he could have very easily allowed his players to fail academically or his boosters to entice players with money like other schools have. JoePa wasn't about any of those things, he was about the students. I would guess there's many stories like mine out there.
Joe Paterno's legacy, in my experience, is not the wins on the gridiron, but a few moments on a hillside.
