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

Dedication

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 you’ve 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 father’s life raised awareness to protect even one child’s safety, he would have told you it was all worth it.

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

—Soren Kierkegaard

I’ll 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 there’s one lesson the world should take from the Duke lacrosse case, it’s 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

Contents

Foreword by Phil Knight

Introduction

Prologue

1. The Elephant in the Room

2. First and Last Memories

3. My Father at Home

4. Crime and Punishment

5. The Three Things We Didn’t Talk About at Home

6. A GRANDfather

7. The Asterisk

8. My Father, My Coach

9. Working for a Father

10. Molder of Men

11. It’s Gotta Be the Shoes

12. The Walks Home

13. Make an Impact, Do Unto Others

14. Hallowed Be Thy Name

15. Give Us This Day…

16. Politics

17. It’s How You Play the Game

18. The Zen of Joe Paterno

19. My Story

20. Runaway Train Coming

21. Storm Clouds

22. The Storm Hits

23. Retirement

24. The Firing, Tempest, and Et Tu Brute

25. Survivor’s Guilt

26. World Turned Upside Down

27. Up Against It

28. The Final Hours

29. A Public Mourning

30. Give Them No Tear!

31. The Stretch Run

32. 2005 and Michael Robinson

33. Vindication

34. Tales from the Gridiron

35. The Recruiting Trail

36. Frozen In Time

37. Where Is Rock Bottom?

38. Gimme Shelter

39. The Fight Back

Epilogue: Avalon

Acknowledgments

Photo Gallery

Foreword by Phil Knight

Six 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 employees—when they go to summer barbecues—the 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 5–5 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 team—a team rules thing—when 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 11–1.

I remember one Friday before a game. I am back there with buddies Ken O’Neil 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 neighbor’s 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 Moore’s wonderful book, Bowerman and the Men of Oregon, he called me to say, Man, there are a lot of similarities.

For me, too.

They both won multiple national championships—plural. They both lived in their first houses long after they could afford much more. What do I need more space for? Tell me that, huh.

They had mutual goals: to change the world for the better, one athlete at a time.

When Bill Bowerman passed, he bequeathed to me one thing: his green cowboy hat. It was in his later years a trademark, wearing it to track meets, in his lab, out on the farm. Green was for his alma mater and employer, cowboy for childhood and learned values. A physical reminder of his most memorable line: Do right and fear no man.

Joe Paterno never heard Bowerman say that. He just lived it. For 85 years.

And somewhere in my mind the two men began to morph together: Bowerman and Paterno, the two most moral men I ever knew.

• • •

But that guy on TV. He has a good reputation, too. Former district judge, former head of the FBI. Credentials to impress anyone.

After five hours I make the 12th and last phone call of the day. Take the name down.

• • •

I walk now.

I used to run. In my mind I still do. It is just that I keep getting passed by the fast walkers.

With walking it takes a lot of time to get a good workout. So I download audiobooks. One summer I read/listened to over 5,000 pages on U.S. history.

But these days I go miles before I turn on my iPod. My conversations with myself take a long time. It is not happy talk. One thing about walking alone: there is no one to hide from.

When I returned to Oregon, I re-read the 16 pages summarizing the grand jury testimony. First of the oh-ohs. It has not been characterized accurately in the presentation I witnessed two days before.

Then I read the Freeh Report. All the pages. Double and triple oh-oh. Joe Paterno-Gary Schultz-Graham Spanier are treated as if they are one person. Joe’s guilt is dictated primarily by emails written by others—what in Judge Freeh’s court-room in an earlier day would be tossed out—not just a hearsay, but double hearsay. This is not the document of a judge; it is a plaintiff’s brief.

So I walk and talk to myself. I try to avoid the obvious. I did what I had to do. Didn’t I?

And it is there at other times as well.

Like when I am in my den at home. That green cowboy hat. It sits on a shelf at eye level. Whenever I pause at my computer, that hat glowers at me.

Until at last I have to recognize myself. I am a child of the west, who grew up to be the sheriff with the lynch mob outside the jail. Give us the prisoner or we’ll kill you both, is the cry of the mob. I forestall for hours, then say, Take him.

No rewinds. I have to live with this.

After six weeks I call Sue. I am coming to the East Coast, can I come by?

I am glad her kids Mary Kay and Jay are there. They make it easier. Sue is more than gracious. Of course. It is expected. But Jay surprises me. Dad would have told you to take the name down.

More than surprised, I am stunned. But after thinking about it, I conclude he is right. Joe would have said that.

Jay has said that to make me feel better, which it does at first. But not for long. Because I believe if the situation had been reversed, Joe Paterno would have left my name up, lynch mob be damned.

Forgiven or not, I cannot escape that I was, at least for a time, one of them.

Today we are in that period between current events and history. I console myself with the belief that like the girls of Salem, Captain Dreyfus, and Hurricane Carter, history will contradict earlier current events.

In the meantime: look around at State College. He is there. Immortality is just timeless ubiquity. So they—and sadly I—through our actions have narrowed the scope and degree of this immortality. But nobody can make him go away.

—Phil Knight, Nike Co-founder

Introduction

Even in the darkest moments when doubts tear at the threads of my sanity, I cling to the TRUTH that at the bottom of Pandora’s Box was that one word: HOPE.

—Jay Paterno

I wrote those words in a letter to my mother, five days after the Freeh Report was issued, with people fleeing from my father’s memory and with a plane circling campus flying a banner demanding the statue of Joe Paterno be taken down.

Watching carefully crafted false accusations turn my father from a respected patriarch to reviled pariah, it was a dark time. I knew he was a man wrongly convicted in the eyes of the media and public.

Over time we’ve patiently seen much has changed. The Freeh Report has been discredited. Penn State’s current president admitted it is nothing more than a prosecutorial document. In March of 2015, former Penn State president Graham Spanier’s lawyers shredded it in a complaint as the basis for his defamation suit against Louis Freeh.

In a deposition Penn State’s own legal counsel Steve Dunham admitted: The university hasn’t accepted the Freeh Report. They haven’t adopted the opinions, conclusions, findings. And that would be a bad thing, a bad thing because it’s not true. He went on to say, And I didn’t think it was appropriate to use the consent decree to accomplish that which was not true.

The NCAA leaders contradicted each other in depositions. The emails collected in discovery show admissions that they were outside of their jurisdiction in this case. Oregon State president Ed Ray, head of the NCAA executive committee, admitted under oath that he had not even read the Freeh Report or consent decree before voting to sanction Penn State.

In November 2014 Tom Corbett became the first Pennsylvania governor to lose a re-election bid. Exit polling showed that about 40 percent of voters rated his handling of Penn State as an important factor in their vote. In the aftermath Governor Corbett admitted that Joe Paterno probably shouldn’t have been fired.

Much has changed, but some things remain. As recently as April 4, 2015, Saturday Night Live made two jokes about Joe Paterno on Weekend Update—jokes based on the Freeh Report’s mythology.

I’m still out of coaching. I miss it. It’s gone for now, but I still get the itch. This is the lot in my life now. The shadow of the false narrative still looms. It may change, but it is in the hands of others. Three university administrators are now in their fourth year of waiting for their day in court to defend themselves. After all these months, we’ve even learned that people who’ve stood behind the Freeh Report privately harbor different opinions, ones they refuse to admit publicly.

The past several years have been a challenge. There have been some dark places. I can say that aloud now. It is good to say it aloud. There comes a time when you think you’ve taken every blow you can. Each of us has a breaking point. I don’t know exactly where mine is. But I know at times I stood in a place where I could see it—close enough to skip stones across the water that led to the deep abyss of oblivion below.

At that moment you make a choice: give up, or find the will to hold on. The inspiration can be as simple as a hug from your six-year-old daughter, the light in her eyes, and the smile as she says, I love you, Daddy. It is as simple as wanting to fight for the moments in life that matter, being there for your children when they graduate, when they get married, when they do something as simple as come home after a long day and need you to lift their spirits.

So we fight on.

We live in a world with few leaders who possess the courage to admit they were wrong and live with the consequences. In the NCAA and at Penn State, both under president Rodney Erickson and continuing with the current administration, there has been a consistent lack of leadership. Despite settling a lawsuit, the NCAA and Penn State’s administration still refuse to admit any wrongdoing. The claims of lack of leadership they used to justify firing Joe Paterno in The New York Times article are the very same chickens that have come home to roost for them. The trustees and administration want peace and to put this all behind us. That will require acknowledging publicly that what they’ve done was wrong. Only then can those roosting chickens, that haunt them like Edgar Allen Poe’s raven cawing Nevermore, fly away and allow this community to heal.

Only then can the shadow that has been cast begin to give way to the truth: this was never about Penn State, and it was never about Joe Paterno. The media and the decisions of government, the university administration, and the NCAA planted the flag of blame on our school, our football program, and Joe Paterno. This book and the interviews done in support of it have moved the media narrative closer to the truth. But there are still those who do not want to know. They are content to believe the worst about a good man who oversaw and led an exceptional football program.

Skepticism is healthy, but when it crosses into the territory of constant conspiratorial cynicism it stains everything, most of all the soul of those who harbor its venom. What I have learned is that allowing the false narrative that this was always about football—or a cover-up that was never there—is a dangerous narrative to allow to take root. As it takes root, it grows and obscures the fact that the people who perpetrate these crimes are people you never suspect and live among us in every community in our country.

It is unfortunate. Even all these years later, even as we have moved so far toward the truth, the final honest assessment is still somewhere in the future. It could all be quickly finalized if the people involved could just admit that they got the story wrong. Once they’ve done that, the truth will rise on a new dawn. Then we can walk back from the precipice and stand over my father’s grave with so many who’ve been on this amazing life journey with him.

Then we can say we made an impact by standing our ground for him.

Then we can say, Rest in peace, Dad.

—Jay Paterno, May, 2015

Prologue

Early morning I walked my dog & saw the glow of the stadium. I will never lose Joe’s light in my life.

—@JayPaterno on January 23, 2012

When you watch someone you love slowly die from cancer, it is the changes that stay with you when they are first gone. I thought of my father without his hair, his raspy voice and silent presence on a ventilator the last two days of his life, communicating with nods.

Now when I visit his grave, I think of him walking, running, laughing, his thick head of dark hair, and his voice, an unmistakable guiding force in my life. I talk to him. I pray, but mostly I want to hear his voice.

It happens sometimes. As I stand by his hillside grave, I hear him in a gust of wind, a rustle of leaves, the sound of geese flying overhead.

Mostly I want to obliterate the wall that went up in his life on November 4, 2011. On one side of that wall, everything good and bad in my life before that day is bathed in light. After that day everything both good and bad is in the dark shadows.

My life will forever be bisected by the wall and the events of that day and the days after it. But in a true display of his character, in the last months of his life my father never allowed himself to feel bitterness or hatred. In a world that wanted him to spew venom, he never allowed it to touch his soul.

For over six decades, Joe Paterno conducted his professional life in a principled way. In seven days those decades would recede into the background as he became the object of an all-out assault in a scandal not in any way of his making. His only goal was to see that justice be carried out without regard to what it would mean to him or his football program.

But Joe Paterno’s life stands far taller than the events of the last months of his life. He carried himself as though Rudyard Kipling’s poem If was encoded in his DNA. He shared that poem with me when I was young, and it has always resonated with me.

No one ever walked with kings but never lost the common touch better than he. No one ever kept his head about him while all others were losing theirs better than he. Joe Paterno could have been anything he wanted yet he chose to settle in State College, coach football, raise a family, and teach the thousands he coached.

More than that, my father had a way of explaining things and talking to you that at times wasn’t easy to understand, but he was always blunt in his assessments. Self-esteem wasn’t something you were given. You earned it through achievement of worthy goals.

One morning in ninth grade, I complained to my siblings about a teacher in front of my parents. That afternoon he called me into his den. He sat at his desk while I stood. He had a blue pullover sweater and tie on. He wore a tie just about every time he left the house when I was a kid. As I stood in front of him, the late afternoon sunlight was coming in through the window behind him, finishing its daily journey over the horizon of Sunset Park behind our house. At times the rays gave my father’s den an other-worldly glow.

As I stood in front of his desk, I knew a friendly conversation was not in the offing. This meeting had begun by the dreaded beckoning, Jay, come in here and shut the door.

Nothing good was ever discussed behind the closed den door—at least for me. If I had to come in with Mom and shut the door, I feared I may be packing my bags. At least today my mother wasn’t summoned. Jay, my father began looking up from his desk. Look, you’re not in trouble.

Relief. However, I sensed there had to be a But coming. There was more to this story.

But… he continued.

I knew it.

But you said something this morning that bothered me.

What was that? I asked.

You were complaining about one of your teachers.

Yeah.

"Yeah? You mean Yes. Don’t talk to me like I am one of your friends."

Yes.

You were complaining.

Yes, I was. He kicked me out of class for something that wasn’t my fault.

It wasn’t your fault?

No. Someone had moved his chair before I came into class, and when he went to sit down he missed the chair and fell on the ground.

So why did he kick you out of the room?

I came in and saw him on the floor and laughed. I couldn’t help it.

My father’s expression changed from inquisitive to one of slight anger.

You couldn’t help it? he asked in a voice with just a trace of ire.

I just couldn’t. Then he got up and said, ‘Out, Out, listen you little S.O.B. that hurt like hell.’

So he kicked you out?

Yes, I had to stand in the hall the first half of the class and I didn’t do anything bad.

At this point I expected him to side with me and commiserate on the injustice I’d endured. After living in this house all my life, I should have known better.

Jay, it probably did hurt him, and the last thing he needed was some smart aleck kid laughing at his pain. You’re going to go in tomorrow and apologize to him.

But Dad, it’s not fair.

Jay, life isn’t fair, and the sooner you learn that the better. Here’s what I want you to know. I am not interested in being your friend now. I don’t particularly care if you like me now. When it is important, you’ll understand, and when it is important, then you’ll like me.

My 14-year-old mind was lost trying to get a grip on the concept. The puzzled look on my face must have conveyed my lack of understanding.

What I am trying to say to you is this: don’t expect me to side with you when you have a conflict with a teacher. They work hard to help you and they don’t get paid a lot of money. You have to learn in this world that sometimes things may not be your fault, but you have to deal with them.

Okay.

What I also want you to understand is this: there will be times in your life when I make you do things you don’t understand or things that don’t seem important. Trust me: they will make sense to you and be important when you have a job, a wife, and a family of your own. When you are on time for meetings and disciplined enough to get things done when you’re supposed to get them done, then you will understand. Whether or not you like me now, and whether or not you get what I am trying to teach you now, isn’t as important as you getting what I want you to know when you’re older.

His tone was forceful but not angry. It was a statement; it was a declaration of what it was to be a father. I knew I wasn’t in trouble; he just wanted me to understand him.

Twenty-eight years later I was having a discussion with my 11-year old son about his school. I found myself giving him a lecture about not wanting to be his friend now. Halfway through I knew exactly where I had heard that before.

That is the beauty of Joe Paterno—his enduring lessons never leave you. In his days as a father, a coach, or a mentor, there was always a lesson to impart. The lessons work their way into your brain and subconscious. Years later they reappear and you smile as you pass on his lesson, knowing exactly where you learned it.

For nearly 62 years at Penn State, he passed along his lessons to everyone he could reach. There were no single teachable moments in his life. It was a constant stream of teaching that never required a particular moment to trigger it. The trick was always to listen to him—always. Very few of his lessons were the type I just mentioned where he had a moment to grab you and let you know he was imparting some big wisdom.

Most of the time they were drive-by types. If you were alert, you got it. If you weren’t, then you missed it. The best learners were the best listeners. It was all part of his mantra about paying attention to details. If you paid attention, you’d reap big rewards.

As the last few months of his life began to unravel, the lessons kept coming. The week after he died, we became aware of just how far his lessons reached. As tens of thousands of people filed past his casket to pay their respects, I listened to stories and hugged those who were crying.

The visitors hailed from down the road to places in faraway lands. All had a story or a connection to this man whom many had never met or had met briefly. But all shared how Joe Paterno’s words or life example had reached them. His classroom was the world, and he may not have even known it.

As I got older, I listened more and more carefully to my father’s stories and jokes and learned to appreciate them all. At a dinner table or in a meeting, he’d speak softly but deliberately. He challenged you to pay attention, maybe even lean in to hear him better, like he was letting you in on a secret. He usually was.

In early February 2011, he and I were talking about the speech President Obama had given in Tucson after congresswoman Gabby Giffords had been shot by a mad gunman. In my bi-weekly column for StateCollege.com, I’d written about it, and my father liked the theme of what I’d said.

Jay, I admire how the President handled that speech. Do you know how tough that was? The event was in a basketball arena and was part memorial service and part rally for the people of that community. To give a speech that was upbeat but respectful was tough. He had to give a speech that mourned the death of a young girl but not bring everyone in the arena down. That is so difficult. I admire what he did.

Little did I know that less than one year later, I’d be standing in a basketball arena giving a speech about my father’s life that had to be hopeful and respectful while also being mournful.

It was my father’s lesson. The President’s speech was something I thought about before writing my father’s eulogy mainly because my father had recognized its power and strength.

That lesson stayed with me when I needed it most. And even now, many months after his voice is gone, his lessons continue to keep coming to me, and his work lives on.

As I wrote on Twitter the morning after he died, Joe’s Light Will Never leave my life, and neither will the words he gave that guide me.

This book is the story of those words and of a life example that not only survived but thrived in the onslaught against him. It forged his example in a way that made it stronger and more enduring.

As 12,000 people stood and held hands at the Memorial For Joe, I led them in the the Lord’s Prayer. I could not have known what I would learn from many people after the event.

But in that moment, Joe Paterno’s life came through as I spoke the words that many tell me was a moment they will never forget:

For 45 years he led this program. He always ended his postgame remarks with the same thing. He’d say, Let’s thank the good Lord. And we would kneel down, hold hands, and say that Lord’s Prayer. One time, just out of curiosity, I said, Dad, why? Why that prayer? He said, The words, Jay, the words: "Our Father, give us this day our daily bread, forgive us…as we forgive, we, us,—every pronoun is plural, we and us. There is no I or me."

Then it clicked. Here in the last act after every football game we play is a reminder from Joe that it was never about him. It was we and us, unselfish to the core. The current and former players in this room know that, and they know that scene. They’ve had those moments. But this afternoon I want us all to have that moment. I ask that if you are able to stand up, hold the hands of the person next to you and step into that locker room and feel the bonds of Penn State. Let’s say one last Our Father as a team for Joe Paterno:

Our Father, who art in Heaven Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth, As it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.

Every time I say that prayer, now I can hear him. I stand by his grave on my visits and I say it aloud so he’ll know I remember his lessons. I hope he smiles when he sees me.

1. The Elephant in the Room

Many of you landed on this page because you are a Penn Stater, a college football fan, or a sports fan wanting to know more about Joe Paterno’s life.

I also know some are here because you’re interested in the Jerry Sandusky scandal and its accompanying fallout. You want to know what Joe Paterno knew and when he knew it. That is the elephant in the room. I get that.

My father’s life was big, complex, and principled, and he himself would tell you he was not perfect. But what the Freeh Report asserted is far from the truth.

Child sexual abuse is the witch trial topic of our time. I fully grasp the powerful emotions wrought by this issue. Calm discussion is difficult. It is outside our comfort zone, creating a lack of awareness that provides cover for perpetrators to operate in plain sight.

However, we must remember what Johns Hopkins University professor Dr. Fred Berlin stated in his report: In our legitimate effort to protect innocent children, the fair treatment of adults should not become a collateral casualty.

After the Freeh Report, I understand why people are angry at the university and my father. But as FBI director, Freeh took Richard Jewell from hero to suspect in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing. After the facts were uncovered, Jewell was indeed the good guy, but the damage was done.

Our world demands immediate reaction and analysis. Initial reporting is often inaccurate and lacks perspective. For my father and Penn State, almost three years later the truth is getting clearer. An in-depth investigation by former U.S. attorney general Dick Thornburgh, former FBI profiler Jim Clemente, and Dr. Berlin presented a record supported by facts and evidence.

Both Thornburgh and Clemente worked with Louis Freeh. Yet both studied the report he issued and found it deeply flawed. Both addressed Joe Paterno’s role related to crimes committed by another.

My father did not commit a crime or even witness a crime.

I grew up a son to Joe Paterno and worked alongside him for 17 years. I know all too well that he was human, an imperfect being. But he always tried to do what he believed was the right thing. When he erred, he erred with the right intentions.

This book is not an attempt to include my father as a victim in the horrible Sandusky story. When my father was fired, he reiterated to me that being fired paled in comparison to what had happened to others.

Beyond the victims, others lost their jobs and reputations. Recognizing that does not detract from our concern for the direct survivors of a predator. It simply realizes this truth; the bomb that went off threw shrapnel all over the place.

But the immediate media focus was not on the crimes committed or even the victims. On November 12, 2011 on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, host Seth Meyers had a bit with actor Jason Sudeikis dressed up as the devil. The devil yells JoePa, a cover-up? This is college football, not the Catholic church. In the entire skit, they referenced the Penn State scandal and Joe Paterno—but the man actually charged with the crimes not a single time. In an email to their subscribers in November of 2011, The New York Times recapped how they had covered the story. It concluded the email by saying this: More than boys had been violated it seemed. A proud university’s sense of superiority and privilege and arrogance had been blown up, too.

Using the specter of boys being violated was inappropriate. But in the headline and body of editor Joe Sexton’s story, the name Penn State appeared six times, Paterno four times, and the man charged at the time, Jerry Sandusky, zero times.

Although Sandusky had not worked at Penn State in almost 12 years, the focus became the university. That the vast majority of the charges occurred at locations unconnected to Penn State did not matter.

The focus also fell on Joe Paterno, who did not witness a crime but when told of what might have been one, a day after it happened, reported it exactly as directed by university policy set by state law.

Joe Paterno has been pronounced by the media as the most powerful man in the state, the foundation of an argument alleging he could and should have done more. His own words: In hindsight I wish I had done more have been used against him over and over again as a sign of guilt.

It never was an admission of guilt. It was a painful statement that if he had only known more, then he could have done more. Clemente’s powerful report makes the point that Joe Paterno was but one of many, some infinitely more highly educated on this issue, who missed this.

One powerful element to come out of our family report was one that surprised me. If you had asked me three years ago what a pedophile looked like, I would have described a loner in a trench coat, cruising parks and elementary school parking lots in a white van.

We were totally unfamiliar with the nice guy offender. Most never suspect a predator could be a married, non-drinking churchgoer who’d spent his life building a charity to help young people. Yet as the experts in our report point out, these people set themselves up in ways that put them around children.

Why did we miss it? It is a societal problem, a lack of discussion and education on this issue. We have that image of the loner in the white van. We prefer not to talk about it or look in the shadows of ignorance where these criminals hide within plain sight.

Before you condemn Joe Paterno, I ask you to consider if you too would have seen into the darkness of another’s heart when all signs pointed you to look the other way.

Before you condemn people at Penn State or in our community, consider this: in adopting Matt Sandusky, Jerry Sandusky went to court to fight for him. I recall him talking to us in the office about the setbacks and ultimate triumph in court.

In the end the presiding judge and the state of Pennsylvania ordered that Jerry be allowed to adopt Matt over the wishes of Matt’s biological mother. They viewed Jerry and his home as the better place for Matt.

The State experts viewed him as a good person with a safe home, but we were to suspect something different? What