"They ask me what I'd like written about me when I'm gone," says the plaque behind Paterno's statue. "I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach."
The school has announced that it intends to honor Paterno, but it risks scraping further at the open wound of emotions surrounding the late coach if that action is seen as too little or superficial by those still angered at the coach's Nov. 9 dismissal in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal.
So what to do? Rename the football stadium after him?
By his own words, that would minimalize him, no?
Name a library after him? They've already done that.
Again, this is easy.
University Park should become Paterno Park.
Because really, that's what it is.
Consider that when he took over as football coach in 1966, Penn State's endowment was really nonexistent. By 2007, largely because of his own fundraising efforts, it was $1.67 billion and now is about $2 billion. Consider that University Park - er, Paterno Park - has almost doubled since he became the football coach, that this land-grant university now includes a law school, and medical school and a top-notch meteorology school and, and, and . . .
And consider amid all this, that modest home he lived in and the relatively little salary he required all these years, and that he walked the ground like one of its educators, which he truly saw himself as, as did many, many others.
Consider the only reason "We are Penn State" makes so much sense to students and alumni is because of this one man.
He did so, so much for this place, gave his life to it really. Does it all get scrubbed away because he did so, so, little when it came to Sandusky?
