"When you look at my driver's license, it says Joseph Vincent Paterno Jr.," said the son, "and I am so proud to have that name."
The only one of three sons who followed Penn State's legendary coach into his profession, the one who lost his father and his own job as a Nittany Lions assistant in the same month, Jay never knew a world where his father was not Joe Paterno, college football icon. By the time Jay left preschool, his father's Penn State teams already had pulled off three undefeated seasons.
Joe Paterno, the father and the winningest Division I college football coach in history, died Sunday at age 85.
It was always a little jarring to hear Jay refer to his father as Joe or Coach, but Jay made it clear that was for the outside world. Among nearly 16,000 attendees, he shared his last intimate moments in the hospital with his father, "sitting and watching him sleep," recalling cherished memories of growing up as the son of Joe Paterno.
But there also was acknowledgment that being one of the five children or 17 grandchildren of Joe Paterno was different.
"One mourner told me, 'Your family isn't very good at math,' " Jay Paterno said. " 'Your father had millions of children and grandchildren.' "
Jay spoke with a kind of level fierceness that suggested he will take your empathy but not your pity. His references to the difficult events of recent months were indirect. The same stories may have been told at the same kind of service if Joe Paterno had died a year ago. Some messages sure sounded different.
Like this one that Joe Paterno's high school friend at Brooklyn Prep, Peter "Bill" Blatty, later the author of the novel, The Exorcist, told the family this week: Blatty had entered a citywide singing contest, and everyone there thought he had won, except the judges. A day later, Blatty ran into Joe coming out of the little corner store by Brooklyn Prep.
