Jay Paterno - Paterno Legacy: Enduring Lessons from the Life and Death of My Father

Copyright 2014 by Jay Paterno

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Triumph Books LLC, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, Illinois 60610.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Paterno, Jay.

Paterno legacy : enduring lessons from the life and death of my father / Jay Paterno ; foreword by Phil Knight.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-60078-974-8 (hardback)

1. Paterno, Joe, 1926-2012. 2. Football coachesUnited StatesBiography. 3. Pennsylvania State UniversityFootballHistory. I. Title.

GV939.P37P38 2014

796.332092dc23

[B] 2014006253

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Triumph Books LLC

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

(312) 337-0747

www.triumphbooks.com

Printed in U.S.A.

ISBN: 978-1-60078-974-8

Design by Amy Carter

Photos courtesy of The Paterno Family unless otherwise indicated

This book is for my mother and father. We will always love you and remember that you both always strove to do what was right, no matter the price. That is more important than anything. You are giants who will have left the world around you a dramatically better place through the lives youve lived.

This book is for my wife and children. Kelley, I love you more now than I ever loved you. Your loyalty, strength, and willingness to fight for me and for my family will always shine in my memories. Fleeing would have been a lot easier. For my children, know that your smiles and your love are the greatest of gifts. The love of my wife and children has been the sustaining force in my life through the darkest times.

For my brothers and sisters and for their children, I hope this book helps you remember the man that Joseph Vincent Paterno was and the lessons he shared with so many.

This book is for journalism students. In a world where the pressure to be first often outweighs the responsibility to be right, I hope you always look in your heart and pursue the truth. It is the most solemn responsibility of freedom of the press. Realize your mistakes will have consequences for real people.

Finally, I hope that this book helps people talk about the issues of child welfare in this country. Abuse is all around us, but if the last days of my fathers life raised awareness to protect even one childs safety, he would have told you it was all worth it.

Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard

Ill end with the deepest lesson this case taught me. When I think back through the whole complex history of this episode, the scariest thing to me is that actual human lives were at the mercy of so much instant moral certainty before the facts had been established. If theres one lesson the world should take from the Duke lacrosse case, its the danger of prejudgment and our need to defend against it at every turn.

Duke University president Richard H. Brodhead at a Duke Law School conference on September 29, 2007

S ix months after the eulogy, it is 6:00 in the morning. I sit in my small hotel room in western Idaho, watching. The man on the TV is finding the worst things to say about an old friend. The TV blinks on and on, and the man goes on almost an hour. The calls to Beaverton have begun at the 15-minute mark.

By the end of that hour, there have been a half-dozen phone calls with me. At the home office, calls pour in from all over the world. What are you going to do about the name of your child-care center?

We are going to get blasted for aiding and abetting pedophilia. For sure. How does it get worse than this?

Every public appearance, every news interview for the next six months, a question will come up on this subject. For 38,000 employeeswhen they go to summer barbecuesthe question will come up. And every single one of those 38,000 will ask him or herself, What kind of a company do I work for?

I can make that all go away. I can protect the company that I devoted my life to. I stare at the wall and think: Why am I pausing?

I first met Joe Paterno a third of a century ago. He was already established as one of the greatest football coaches of all time. But it had not always been so.

He had come to his school in 1950 out of Brooklyn by way of Brown to this place as far from Brooklyn as you can get: a land of thick forests and wide streams, an idyllic landscape appropriately named Happy Valley.

An area with a significant Amish population. Sometimes on a Saturday night, after the furniture sale, a young man would steal into town for a couple of secret pops. Later that evening you could see him pulling irregularly on the reins, his surrey weaving all over the country road.

In 1966 when he, at last, got the head coaching job, he started what he called, The Grand Experiment, setting out to prove that academics and athletics can co-exist, even enhance each other. It included these goals: recruit without cheating, make your players go to class, graduate them, and compete.

How did that work out?

He went 55 his first year.

Then he won. Oh, how he won. Four hundred and nine times. If Nick Saban coaches 20 more years and averages 12 wins a year, he will still be four wins short of 409. Joe belonged to Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church in State College. I used to kid him, What did they call it before you got there?

And in those years, the people of Penn State built a world-class university, and Joe was one of its chief architects.

So when I walked in the door, it was for me, as well as many others, about that Grand Experiment, not just winning. Over a couple years I was drawn, not just by the champion of that Grand Experiment, but also to a man with a great sense of humor, including about himself, and a deep sense of doing the right thing in all areas.

I watched him make numerous hard decisions. Keep an All-American running back out of a game because the kid missed study hall, kick his two best defensive players off the teama team rules thingwhen he had just finished back-to-back losing seasons for the first time. Fans, donors called for him to step down. You are too old.

And then he takes what is left and goes 111.

I remember one Friday before a game. I am back there with buddies Ken ONeil and David Frei. We have gone over to the house to wish him good luck, and much of the family is there. The driveway is jammed with cars, and as we maneuver out, we stop to let a college student pass on the sidewalk. He pays us no attention. As he crosses the boundary between Sunset Park and the residence, he takes off his baseball cap, places it over his heart. When he moves into the neighbors space, he places the cap back on his head.

At the 2010 National Football Coaches Convention, when he enters the room, 800 coaches spontaneously rise to give him a standing ovation.

When he passes they invite all the lettermen back for a private dinner the night before the memorial service. Forty-five years at 25 players a year, they are expecting as many as 750; 1,250 showed up.

Simply, he was the gold standard by which all other football programs were measured.

When Jay Paterno read Kenny Moores wonderful book,