The look and the voice were unmistakable. The mistakes of judgement by the man and the administration were unforgivable. Five decades of Happy Valley life came to a sudden and stunning end last fall followed last Sunday by the death of the man who made it possible.
Joe Paterno was a product of ethnic Brooklyn who took his no-nonsense upbringing first to the Ivy League and then to nowheresville --- State College Pennsylvania. Driving there from Syracuse for the first time in the sixties, the trip transformed this college freshman into a 6-year- old with repeated cries of “Are we there yet?”. Mile after mile, hour after hour of nothing, absolute nothing.
Why would anyone want to coach and live in a place that knew no pizza, egg creams or Jews. About as far from Brooklyn as any Italian or Jew would want to be and Joe was a bit of both, sort of.
No, Joe Paterno was not Jewish, but the kid from Flatbush was proud and honored to be the Shabbos goy. Here’s how he explained growing up in Brooklyn in his autobiography, Paterno: By the Book,
“Where we lived, when a kid asked, ‘What are you?’ he didn’t mean are you a second baseman or a baritone. He meant, “Are you Irish or German or Italian or Jewish or what?’ Religion — just having one, and believing your religion was the truth — was important, too, even if yours wasn’t the same as the other guy’s. When a Jewish kid had to abandon the stickball game to get to shul on time on the High Holy Days, the rest of us understood. And on those days I felt chosen when that kid’s family asked me in to light their stove because they weren’t supposed to strike matches. I was the shabat goy. Of course, everybody knew your family was important to you, and you assumed the other kid’s family was important to him.”
This was a story echoed by brother George Paterno who was the radio analyst for the Penn State network. When I chatted with him in the broadcast booth he sounded so much like Joe that if you tuned in you’d be wondering how could he be coaching the team and be on the radio at the same time!