As it is, what we are left with is a tragic parable straight from the Greek mythology that so captivated him, of the heroic rise and then great fall from grace, brought about by hubris, by an ego left unchecked. If only he had allowed a restraining hand on his shoulder. If only . . .
So then, which image will we remember? Those Coke-bottle-thick glasses, the rolled-up Khakis and white socks, the prowling of the sideline like a predator, the fire-and-brimstone oratory of those Friday night pep rallies, the moments he emerged from the tunnel onto the floor of the vast arena he built, an army of blue and white thundering behind him, with 100,000 loyalists on their feet and invoking the defiant battle cry: "We Are . . . Penn State . . ."?
Or the unsettling images of these last, sad few years, when he grew frail and his bones began to snap like twigs, when he grew irritable and short-tempered, an old man's grumpiness, and when great boulders began to rain down on him . . . the hasty and clumsy nighttime firing without even the courtesy of advance warning, imprisoned for the most part in his own home, a flotilla of reporters tracking every step, the falls and the fractures, the chilling diagnosis of cancer . . . frankly, it all seemed like piling on.
It hit like a flash fire, those allegations of child molestation, and the Valley of Happy, always so isolated and insulated, protected from the real world, was roiled with a scandal that is without precedent, and one that involves just about the last person, and the last institution you'd expect. Right? We were all taken aback, weren't we?
