Will Paterno be able to rest in peace?

IT WAS a scene usually reserved for the death of rock stars or heads of state. Hundreds of people were there, some with tears in their eyes, many shivering in the low-20s cold. Some laid bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes of appreciation at the base of a statue just outside Beaver Stadium. Others held lit candles, the universal sign of remembrance.

Joe Paterno, iconic longtime former football coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions, was 85 when he passed away yesterday morning at the Mount Nittany Medical Center from complications of lung cancer. And so the mourners came, from as far away as California and Georgia, to pay tribute to a man who had meant so much to all of them, even if some had never met him personally.

For this day, at least, and perhaps for many more to come, the bronze likeness of the winningest football coach in Division I history was transformed into Strawberry Fields, Graceland, the Capitol Rotunda. Pilgrims and well-wishers can be expected to visit the site on a daily basis now, with crowds sure to swell on autumn Saturdays whenever the standard 100,000-plus fans gather in Beaver Stadium to watch the Lions play on the lush, green field that someday soon might be named in Paterno's honor.

Tom Bradley, for 33 years a Paterno assistant and the interim coach for four games after Paterno shockingly was fired by Penn State's Board of Trustees on Nov. 9 in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal, spoke for many when he said that JoePa "will go down in history as one of the greatest men, who maybe most of you know as a great football coach."

Adam Taliaferro, the former Penn State defensive back whose rehabilitation from a potentially catastrophic spinal-cord injury in 2000 is one of the most uplifting chapters in his alma mater's rich football history, put it another way: "Penn State," he said, "has lost its heart. If [Paterno's statue] wasn't a shrine before, it definitely will be one now."