Say it ain't so, Joe

Law enforcement officers, social workers, mental health therapists and those in similar professions have high rates of depression. This is in part due to the fact that, day in and day out, they are immersed in the underbelly of society. I suppose the flip side of this is the buoyancy we feel when encountering the heights to which human nature can soar.

This week, I am anything but buoyant. I’ve lost one of the major underpinnings of my faith in human nature.

As a child, I was fascinated by biographies; Ben Franklin, Clara Barton, Albert Schweitzer, Harriet Tubman, Jim Thorpe, Joan of Arc, Andrew Carnegie, Harry Truman, and others who exemplified the potential of mankind. I wasn’t aware that I was perusing the sanitized versions that larded the school library.

My illusions began to shatter locally. The cop who walked the beat turned out to be on the take. A teacher was spirited away for reasons only hinted at. A priest was arrested.

Getting into regular newspaper reading was of no comfort. The musician turned out to be an addict, the star baseball player who corked his bat, the mayor who was on the take and so on. I recall graduating to works in the public library that revealed more about the founding fathers, such as they may have been motivated as much, if not more, by a quest for power and wealth than liberty and justice for all.

Over the years, I came to see all sides of prominent businesspeople, elected officials, directors of charitable organizations, educators, professional athletes and entertainers and others who society elevated to prominence. I lost the tendency to look outwardly for benchmarks to shoot for. Except, perhaps, for one case who was a shining beacon in a sea of refuse.

I first met Joe Paterno when he recruited at my high school. I was profoundly impressed with the time he spent with me talking about life in general, even though it was readily apparent that he saw no place for me on his team. Even then, before college athletics became a more unseemly commercial enterprise, I was moved by his emphasis on doing things the right way. I distinctly remember him fielding a question from the group about his not recruiting Joe Namath, a football icon in our state. He gave an account about going to visit Namath and quickly determining that he was not of the character he required in his players.

His quarry at our school was a quarterback gifted with all the athletic talents in the world but sullied with a prodigious sense of entitlement. My opinion of Paterno spiked when he kicked him off the team the following year for reasons that had nothing to do with football. I would later learn of similar actions he took against other outstanding players who failed to live up to standards of conduct.

Over the years, I would have a few contacts with him, directly or indirectly. Some years back, I called him seeking advice in behalf of a small college starting a football team. I was certain he didn’t recall who I was but he readily rendered assistance for them in addition to the requested counsel.

I watched him donate athletic scholarships back to academics, eschew the gaudy trappings for himself and his team and otherwise reflect an adherence to guiding principles. As college football sank more and more into the quagmire, he prominently ascended even higher above the muck. He was the one figure in any walk of life who was determined to do it the right way, regardless of cost. Or, so it appeared.

Now, the boots have been stripped off and the feet of clay are in the public limelight. It’s a very sad day, and not just for academia.