Joe Paterno: What Is a Legacy?

Who was Abraham Lincoln?

The 16^th president. Emancipator of the slaves. Unifier of America.

But he was also the backer of one of the most notorious POW camps in history. Camp Douglass in Chicago, where nearly 25 percent of its prisoners, men who just years earlier were called citizens, died in rot and filth.

He also was the only president to ever suspend the writs of Habeas Corpus. The natural law that guards citizens against the dictatorial statues that allows unlawful imprisonment. The very foundations of American ideology—the rights of man above hierarchy of power—were ignored with Lincoln’s signature.

Why then do we remember him for the first three adjectives, idyllic symbols of good, as opposed to the demonizing traits of the latter, which we would more closely associated with tyrannical pursuits of a megalomania dictator?

It is the balance between myth and reality that has created this schism. A break with truth made through the ages to immortalize a man whose greatness outweighs his wrong doings.

We do not want to remember Abraham Lincoln, we want to remember the tall, gangly, bearded figure, raised in the modesty of a cozy Illinois log cabin, built on the labor of endearing love for individual prosperity. A figure whose honesty came along at a time of national peril, almost as if blessed to us to by an ethereal being.

That’s the Lincoln John Ford created in his film Young Mr. Lincoln. That’s the Lincoln we honor every February 12^th, marking his birthday, or perhaps ‘coming’ is more accurate. And that’s the Lincoln I know every time I hear his name.

But that is not Abraham Lincoln. A far cry from it. Lincoln was human; therefore fault, guilt, poor judgment and the other fallacies of man that keep us here and allow us to fade once we pass are in him and with him everywhere he went. It is only after that passing where myth can begin to compete with reality. Only then does the truth blend with the subjective truth and the exact consequences of one’s life become known.

Subjective truth, or myth, or even art if you prefer, is the basis on which we create our foundations. Every society has their own and each reflects the very principles on which they have built a culture. They are important for any society to function, providing a benchmark for behavior and supply an achievable ideal that can too raise citizens to the level of demigod.

Memory has no place in the myth. Memory clouds the conception of good as it often alludes to a sense of mortality. For us to remember is to imply we were there, and if we were there then the event or the person is made to be less than the myth by the very nature that we were allowed to take part in it.

But all stories of the past take memory to tell. By definition this is true. But when the story of Lincoln standing on a podium on the grounds of one of the bloodiest battles in American history at Gettysburg Pennsylvania, we are not remembering a thing.

Those individuals who were there to witness the event over a century ago are long gone. Even their accounts have become distilled through the minds of those they told into a new memory, one that reflects on the original, without having any connection to it at all.

This new story, that combines memory, myth and time is something else. Something that is as much a part of the person or the event as it is not. Something that dismisses facts only so it may transcend time.

This is a legacy.

When Joe Paterno was relieved of his coaching duties at Penn State University Wednesday night it was a surreal occasion. For the students it has often been likened to losing a father. A man who help build the institution that you have devoted four years of your life to. A man whose name is ripe with meaning as you study in a library adorning his name or pass by a bronze statue of his likeness outside Beaver Stadium. They were mourning the loss of JoePa.

Less than 300 miles away an article is being published in the New York Times. It too is talking about the alleged sexual abuse that former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky had committed against a group of young boys.

A heinous series of crimes thats fallout has resulted in Paterno’s termination. But there is something very different about this article. JoePa is not JoePa. He is Mr. Paterno. A sobering way to refer to a man who many call a father figure. It is the biggest insult you could make to a one who is considered the greatest at what he does.

The New York Times made the bold decision to make him human.

The myth of Joe Paterno extends throughout Pennsylvania. From its geographical center at State College, out west into the heart of the Allegheny’s and east to the metropolitan’s that line the Delaware River, he has become a figure of good.

His “Grand Experiment,” which paired academics and football help build Penn State from a fall back college for the privileged of wealthy neighborhoods of Philadelphia and a the only hope of escape from rural steel towns, to an institution that prides itself on excellence of the highest order, both on the field and off.

The name itself—“The Grand Experiment”—echoes the ambitions of the Enlightenment; something that suggests it is bigger than one experiencing it can ever comprehend.

There is no denying what JoPa has done for Penn State and Pennsylvania as a whole. To ensure his myth lived on, Penn State hired sculptor Angelo DiMaria to immortalize Paterno forever in bronze statue of his likeness.

That statue stands outside of Beaver Stadium today. Paterno running out on to the field—or perhaps into history—with a single finger raised in the air. A smile cross his face, either in recognition of what he has done, but even more so the joy he feels in leading three Nittany Lions that are cut into the frieze of the wall behind him. The statue does not work without the players, but must stand apart from them. Only in this way can the myth work.

Today is Friday November 11^th, 2011. Tomorrow the Penn State football team will take on Nebraska in Happy Valley for what figures to be their biggest game of the season thus far. The winner takes an upper hand on the other for a spot in the first ever Big Ten championship game and a chance to go to the Rose Bowl.

But for every player on that team and every player who has donned the navy blue jersey and clean white helmet, it will be remembered as the first time in decades where Joe Paterno was not there.

It will call back to the horrific crimes that were committed almost a decade ago.

It will mark the end of an era, both on the field and one of moral honor off it. Saturday will not be about football. It will be about loss.

How will be remember Joe Paterno? Will he be JoePa to my grandchildren, or will they ask why Mr. Paterno was fired in the middle of one of his best seasons in years? I do not know the answer to this. Neither do you. No one living currently does and few will ever be able to see it out.

It will take the distancing of our memory and that dualistic struggle between truth and myth, facts and time, to play out before we really learn who Joe Paterno was.

Will his final image be the statue outside of Beaver stadium, or will it be grainy footage of an old man defending himself on his porch, beaten?

What is Joe Paterno’s legacy? Only time will tell.