Originally, in the Tribute to Joe post, I improperly deduced that Joe Paterno had been diagnosed with cancer before his first broken pelvis incident, because of some ambiguity in Jay Paterno’s speech. My conjecture has been subjected to the keen eyes and minds of my readers, who have shown it to be false. What I initially published was:

One thing I picked up from his speech was that Joe had been diagnosed with lung cancer before he was treated for the broken pelvis, inasmuch as Jay spoke of taking a walk in Sunset Park with Joe after he was diagnosed, a day before he fractured his pelvis, which confirms my suspicions about his delaying treatment until after the football season.

After having received some comments, I reviewed Jay’s speech, but I still could not determine whether the broken pelvis incident was the first or the second. If it was indeed the second, it occurred on December 11, 2011, which wouldn’t imply that Joe delayed his cancer treatments. Clearly, I missed an obvious and important indicator, as one additional tweeter brought out: Jay had spoken of  it being cold during the walk and he had referred to “the few leaves”; therefore, I have deleted the above sentence from the post. Jay obviously implied that it was, indeed, December.

Furthermore, ESPN had reported the following:

Scott Paterno said on Nov. 18 that his father was being treated for lung cancer. The cancer was diagnosed during a follow-up visit for a bronchial illness. A few weeks after that revelation, Paterno also broke his pelvis after a fall but did not need surgery.

I’ll let that put the lid on this matter. I regret any inconvenience or concern my inappropriate conjecture might have caused.

One more thing. I have it on good word that Jay is the second youngest Joe and Sue’s offspring. Word!

Former Penn State head football coach, the late Joe Paterno, was memorialized on Thursday afternoon before a packed house of more than 10,000 at Bryce Jordan Center, where the Nittany Lions play basketball. The event was as emotional as we expected, but it was replete with humor, with hitherto unknown Paterno vignettes, and with one ballsy speech by the founder of Nike and Joe’s friend, Phil Knight.

The VIP section occupied most of the basketball court, with the Paterno family and close friends in the front rows, then the present Nittany Lions football team, and behind them, a myriad players from past teams. The cameras trained on Sue Paterno before the speeches started, as she hugged children and grandchildren and expressed her gratitude. Speakers for the event had been invited by the Paterno family, and some videos collages had been produced to fill some of the gaps. These were very well done, considering the brief time in which they had to be put together.

Joe, of course, would have hated it. He publicly despised this type of attention — at least that was his story for external consumption. Upon accepting awards, Paterno would always humbly credit his family, his university, and his team before he would take any credit himself.

Upon reflection, I have a few observations to share with you, mainly concerning Phil Knight’s speech. Before I get to that, I’ll mention some other things I found notable.

The Penn State administration was conspicuous in its absence from list of invited speakers. The one exception was the Susan Welch, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. She was a natural, because of Joe’s love of literature and the arts, which led him to establish the Paterno fellowship for outstanding liberal arts students. Lauren Perrotti, current Penn State senior and Paterno Fellow, also spoke.

Had he somehow been alive to plan his own memorial (which he would have hated), Joe probably would have  invited the university president to speak, just because of Paterno’s graciousness and sense of propriety. However, Joe’s family had a bad taste in its collective mouth from the actions of the administration and the Board of Trustees. Even though Steve Garban, long-time trustee had been Joe’s friend, he was not invited. Obviously, the family, most notably Sue, had strong feelings about the impropriety of Joe’s dismissal. On November 9, after Fran Ganter delivered the notorious note that told Joe to call a number that turned out to be a telephone at a local hotel where the board was meeting, Sue handed Joe the note, he called, and heard the voice on the other end tell him he was no longer head football coach at Penn State. He told Sue. She phoned the number back to tell them in one sentence what she thought of their action and then hung up. Sue will always think negatively of the people who did this to her husband. In the days following Joe’s dismissal, Sue had even been personally insulted when she went to take her daily swim in the Lasch Building swimming pool and was told that she no longer had privileges there because her husband was no longer an employee. There was no way in hell anyone associated with the administration or the BOT would be invited!

Football players representing each decade of Joe’s tenure as head coach were consistently articulate and excellent speakers whose love for Joe shone through. Kenny Jackson, Charlie Pittman (1960s), Jimmy Cefalo (1970s), Todd Blackledge (1980s), Chris Marrone (1990s), and Michael Robinson (2000s) from past teams, and Mike Mauti of the current team consistently praised Joe for his principles, his support, and his devotion. I learned something new from each one of them.

Mike Robinson, representing 2000 – 2010, spoke of his frustration with Paterno and his struggles to be named the starting quarterback. Joe was frank with him about his abilities and his future. He told Robinson that he could see him playing in the Pro Bowl someday, not as a quarterback, but as a fullback or a running back. Robinson, who currently plays fullback for the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL, was selected as a replacement player for the Pro Bowl this year. He went with the old man’s wisdom, which was contrary to his own self-assessment, and found his niche in the NFL, one from which he could make a significant impact.

Jimmy Cefalo, representing the 1970s, spoke of Joe recruiting him — or rather, recruiting his mom. At the moment when Joe told Mrs. Cefalo that her pasta was better than Mrs. Cappelletti’s, the young Jimmy knew he was going to Penn State to play wide receiver for the Nittany Lions. “That’s hitting below the belt, Joe!”  His football career, as you know, was a smashing success. When he had finished during his senior year and had met all the academic requirements for his degree in journalism, he decided to take his remaining few months as a Penn State undergrad easy, scheduling a light load of basket weaving courses. Subsequently, Paterno called him into his office. Cefalo wondered what it was about, as he was done with football. Upon his arrival for the meeting, the coach waved the class schedule at him and said, “What do you think you’re doing, Cefalo? This schedule is beneath you!”

Mike Mauti of the current team was a bit nervous speaking in front of such a large audience, but he settled down quickly, telling of Paterno’s comparing him with his dad who had also played for Joe. Another recruiting story came out. Mauti would decide on Penn State rather impulsively on one of his visits to Joe’s office with his parents. Joe pinned him down, “All right, kid, I need your decision. What’s it going to be?” Mauti responded, “I’m here!” At that point, Rich Mauti, the father, chimed in, “You said you were going to talk it over—”  Paterno cut him off as if he had caught him telling tales in the locker room. “Shut up, Mauti!” he said, “You heard the kid. He’s here!”

Throughout the speeches, the notion that Sue Paterno was a central figure in recruiting and nurturing players became well established, as did both Mr. and Mrs. Paterno’s concern for academics.

Phil Knight is the founder and CEO of Nike. He has been a friend of Joe Paterno for many years. He was the only speaker to have the chutzpah to address the elephant in the room, namely the  Sandusky scandal and the Board of Trustees’ rush to judgement to make Joe the scapegoat. He received the longest ovation of the afternoon for expressing what was on everyone’s mind — that Joe had gotten a bum rap that threatened to diminish his legacy. Perhaps the other speakers had something to lose by mentioning the controversy, perhaps they were told to avoid it, or perhaps they felt it would be Joe’s wish that they avoid it. After all, Paterno had never protested his own firing or expressed any bitterness in public over the hatchet job done on him by the media in the wake of the Board’s action. However, when one is as secure as Phil Knight, one can express the painful truth with impunity. Paterno, he said, had not committed the crime but was taking the blame for it because he was a convenient target for the media. Knight flat out stated that Paterno followed the rules, sent the matter up the chain of command as prescribed, and placed the matter in the hands of a world class university. If any villain existed, said Knight,  it was in the investigation, not Joe Paterno. Knight asked, “Who is the real trustee at Penn State?” It all had to be said, especially the part about the media hatchet job (reminding me of Newt Gingrich calling out CNN), to clear the air so the beloved coach could rest in peace.

This Turkey applauds Phil Knight for opening up his mouth. Say what you will about his cheap foreign labor, expensive shoes, bullying of the NCAA, and the weird uniforms Nike produced this year, Phil has a heart, a soul, and a sense of propriety. Paterno was his friend and hero. Phil had his “six”.

Jay Paterno was the cleanup batter, whose speech was everything you would expect it to be. He expressed pride in being Joe’s namesake, of which he is reminded each time he looks at his driver’s license and sees “Joseph V. Paterno, Jr.”.  As long as I’ve been listening to Jay talk about the team, the university, and anything related, he has always referred to his dad as Joe. During this remembrance, however, it was mostly “Dad.” The one thing that fell flat with the crowd was Jay’s attempted imitation of Joe, which didn’t really work. At two different times while he was at the podium, when the audience stood and cheered him on, he yelled, “SIT DOWN!” just the way his dad would have, in his high pitched, agitated voice. It didn’t really sound right coming from baby-faced Jay, and it didn’t sound much like Joe, anyway. Jay’s wrap-up was touchingly emotional. He  by led everyone in the Lord’s Prayer, just as his dad had done after each football game, then said he had one more story to tell. He spoke of his childhood and the strong presence of his dad in the family. He spoke of his final day with Joe, when the two of them were alone together in the hospital room, how he saw flashbacks of his life’s various stages, always including his dad. Much as he had played on the floor in the study when his dad was working, there he was once again alone with Joe, the the father-son duo. Only now, it was Jay’s turn to be the pillar of strength and the giver of advice.  He kissed his dad and told him, “You’ve done all that you could do. You won. We all love you. You can go home now.”

Afterward, a lone trumpeter wearing a classic Blue Band uniform played a mournful version of “Hail to the Lion.”

Jay is Joe’s second youngest offspring, who willfully bore much of the burden for Joe’s final arrangements, even though he was clearly devastated by his loss. No matter what you might think of Jay’s performance as a coach, in this much more important function Jay delivered the performance of his life. Through the whole sordid affair of the Sandusky affair and Joe’s dismissal, and through the tragedy of Joe’s leaving this earth, Jay has impressed me as being a professional in his business conduct and a rock solid family man. He has earned my respect.

Because of Joe’s love for opera, particularly Italian opera, one of the video sound tracks was the late Luciano Pavarotti’s signature aria “Nessun Dorma” from Turandot. This Turkey thought it fit perfectly. It concludes with a proclamation, “All’alba vincerò. Vincerò! Vincerò!” (At dawn I will win. I will win! I will win!).

I’ll remember many of the speeches I heard Thursday, but it will be Knight’s as well as Jay’s that imprinted themselves most indelibly on my memory.

What did you all think of the tribute? Did it give you a sense of closure, or did it still leave things hanging? And what did you think of Jay’s attempted Joe imitation?

Those of us who knew Joe Paterno through direct and indirect association (in my case, the latter, for nearly 50 years) were well aware of his indomitable spirit. In fact, he was so stubborn — completely intractable at times — that many of us eschewed political correctness in our frustration with his decisions, calling him not so lovingly “that stubborn wop”.

Joe was family to us Penn Staters, so we could talk freely about his bourbon and ginger, his stubborn streak, his Italianness, his Catholicism and such, just as we would have done back in the day on the sidewalks and stoops of his native Brooklyn. Joe grew up in an earthier era when such arguments and put-downs were the spice of life.  Moreover, like family, when the controversy of the moment had ended, we’d kiss and make up, many times having to admit that the old man was right.

Thus it was with disdain that following his death on Sunday, that I observed so many commentators choosing the lazy road, opining — nay, pontificating — that Old Joe had died of a broken heart. They didn’t know Joe. They couldn’t have. I attempted to dispel that broken heart notion with anyone who would listen to me, but everyone is entitled to an opinion and few ever change theirs.

“My life has been filled with sunshine. A beautiful and caring wife. Five healthy children. I got to do what I loved. How many people are that lucky?” –Joseph V. Paterno, 1926-2012

You know what “they” say about opinions.

My personal opinion is that Joe’s spirit could not be broken by the Sandusky scandal and the ensuing, undeserved, ignominious knee-jerk dismissal by the Board of Trustees. Joe had been through innumerable tough situations during the course of his long life but he never showed signs of faltering in the face of adversity. In the end, what defeated him was not “a broken heart” but metastatic small cell carcinoma of the lung. I would be willing to bet that Joe faced his illness as yet another sturdy opponent to study and defeat. Alas, this one had already advanced too far by the time he was ready to begin his fight. He was flanked by metastases like a quarterback being attacked by a blitz with his pocket collapsing around him. It was only a matter of time before Joe was sacked by the marauding rogue cells. However, you can be certain that he went down swinging, not wallowing in self-pity or grimacing with bitterness.

Writer Joe Posnanski has been immersing himself in Joe’s life — and unexpectedly, his death — for many months as he researches the biography he is writing called “PATERNO”, to be published by Simon & Shuster in September. He spent time with Joe and the Paterno family during Joe’s final days, and wanted to share some details of that time with us via a short piece he wrote for Sports Illustrated. In it, he asserts that Joe Paterno did not die of a broken heart. When Joe entrusted Posnansky to write his biography, he chose wisely.

Let us lay that sorry-ass “broken heart” story line to rest!

One other thing worthy of note here: Thursday’s “A Memorial For Joe” will air live on both the Big Ten Network and BTN.com at 2 PM EST.

Software piracy has been going on for a long time. How many of us know someone who has an illegal copy of Photoshop or Microsoft Office? That was bad enough, but now the pirates are increasingly cutting into Hollywood’s revenues, so suddenly congress, which must have considered the computer industry a bunch of geeks, is taking notice. Their buddies in Hollywood helped elect them.

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA.

We can unite our voices to apprise our legislators of our opposition to this travesty. Google has established an on-line petition that will serve to reflect our numbers. Please consider signing it NOW, as the Senate vote on PIPA commences on January 24, 2012. That’s next Tuesday!

The Nittany Turkey might cease to exist if this onerous legislation is signed into law. So might thousands of worthwhile blogs across the country. So might YouTube, for all practical purposes. The government will have the power to shut down web sites without due process.

The piracy problem is definitely out of control, inasmuch as every high school and middle school kid knows how to download movies and tv shows without paying for them. They are not discouraged by their parents, who should be the primary regulators. Of course, if the parents rationalize that it’s ok because it’s not hurting anyone, that’s much of the problem. People feel entitled to take whatever appears on their screen. It’s on THEIR computer, so it’s as good as theirs. However, morality cannot be legislated.

Tell a criminal that he can’t have a gun and he’ll get one anyway. Tell a kid that she can’t steal movies on-line and she’ll do it anyway. No amount of domestic regulation will fix either issue, as black markets will always exist, operating either offshore, or under the radar of the authorities.

While I disdain piracy, I just as strongly disdain stifling regulation. The Internet has been a bastion of creativity and sharing — legal sharing of knowledge —much of which will be curtailed with the passage of PIPA/SOPA. Don’t we have enough useless, costly, and counterproductive regulation already?

Once again, voting starts in the Senate on January 24, 2012 (next Tuesday). Please sign the Google petition and tell your senators and congressmen that you oppose PIPA and SOPA. We need all the help we can get in order to stop this nonsense.

LINKS

• Ars Technica – How to make your voice heard
• Official U.S. Senate Site
• U.S. House of Representatives
• WikiPedia
• Electronic Freedom Foundation
• Public Knowledge

This totally cracked me up. I know, I know, must be schadenfreude, but these are some of the stupidest stunts ever attempted, with predictable results. It has nothing to do with Penn State football (guaranteed that none of the main characters are PSU alums), but it lifted my spirits. Check it out!

I haven’t been writing much lately, for which I apologize to those who look forward to each wonderful new bit of drivel from this old Turkey. This is not the usual hiatus between the regular season and the bowl game inspired by sheer laziness. I wish it were. My mother passed away in Ft. Lauderdale this week at the age of 90 after a long decline in health due to COPD. I’ve been doing other things besides writing this blog, as you will well understand.

My Mother and I, about a week ago.

I’m sad and I feel hollow, like something that has been a part of me for my entire life has been lost and will never return. Mom and I had our ups and our downs, but I knew that she would always be there for me no matter what — no matter where I was living, and no matter what I did. I could do ridiculous things, too, and often did so in my youth, but I was always forgiven. Mom was unwaveringly on my side. Now, suddenly, that’s all gone. There is something comforting about having parents, even for an old fowl like me. I lost my dad in 1999, although he and I had been estranged for years. Now this, and I am parentless for the first time in my life at the tender young age of 65.

I won’t drag you through the sadness, though. That’s mine and my brother’s to bear. I’ll just tell you a little bit about Mom, or Martha, as she was known to everybody.

Martha was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania in 1921 to a middle class family. She grew up there, graduated from Altoona High School in 1939, and attended junior college nearby. I can vaguely recall that she went to Leland Powers acting school in Brookline, Massachusetts, but I do not believe she finished a curriculum there. She returned to Altoona during World War II and became a volunteer with the Red Cross. She had a younger brother, Ben, who was studying engineering at Penn State when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He was killed in action on Martha’s birthday in 1945.

When Irvin Goldfarb, a high school classmate, returned from the war, Martha and he dated and eventually married in August 1945. They moved from Altoona to Pittsburgh, where they proceeded to crank out two young turkeys, first me, then 16 months later, my brother Joel. We lived in Pittsburgh until the summer of 1961, when we picked up stakes and moved to Florida. Shortly thereafter, Martha’s father, Harry, died on December 7, 1961, Pearl Harbor Day.

It was around that time, too, that Irvin, then 41, fell into some of the untoward habits of adolescent middle aged men everywhere: drinking, gambling, philandering, and whatever else he felt like doing to evade his family responsibilities, which he never really felt comfortable discharging. Some would say that Irvin never grew up. My personal assessment is that he did, but he became more self-absorbed as each year passed. By the time we reached Florida, his typical day after coming home from work would be to eat dinner, take a bath, and go out, sometimes not returning until after dawn the next morning. I was happy about that, because if he was out losing his money gambling, getting plastered or laid, or some combination of those three, he wasn’t giving me a dose of his crap. In fact, I was disappointed when he stayed home at night, which fortunately wasn’t often. I was in high school by that time, so I knew I’d be out of there before long. Irvin was never much of a father to me; instead, he was more of a hypocritically tyrannical absentee ruler. In any case, his irresponsibility, immaturity, adultery, and mental cruelty (as they used to call it back then) led to a divorce in 1966.

I had already left the house and enrolled at Penn State at that time, but Joel, living with Martha, had to bear the full force of the battles between Martha and Irvin. Irvin continued to feel his oats, hanging out with a number of floosies, a few of whom he married along the way. His typical pattern was to create a business with ill-gotten funds, run it for a while, and then tire of it, which was similar to his approach to being a husband and father. To complete the picture, I’ll tell you that he actually thought that he could earn a living playing poker in Las Vegas; he tried that for a while, but not unlike all his other ventures in life, he was destined to fail. But I digress.

Meanwhile — and I really cannot recall the details of the genesis of this thing — Martha had been seeing a man she had known in Altoona, I suppose while she was up there visiting her mother. For some reasons that will always remain unknown, she quickly jumped into a marriage with this guy, Howard Brett. A few months later, she just as quickly jumped out of the marriage with an annulment, and both went their separate ways. Martha came back to Florida, never to marry again. She did, however, have a boyfriend or two through the years.

After Irvin predictably fell into debt, in particular owing some money to the type of wise guys to whom you don’t really want to owe money (if you know what I mean), he moved to Phoenix, and later, after having screwed up yet another business there, he moved back to Ft. Lauderdale with the last of his wives. They lived there until 1999, when he died of lung cancer — a popular cause of death for people of his generation, having smoked most of his life — just ten days shy of his eightieth birthday. He requested that he be cremated and his remains sent to Arlington National Cemetery, which represented the recognition he wanted for serving during the war in Europe. His widow of the time, Dorothy, made sure that his wish was granted.

A year earlier, both Irvin’s mother and Martha’s mother had died within weeks of each other. Martha’s mother, Emma, was 102, and Irvin’s mother, Lena, was 98. You see, the women in my bloodline get the good genes. The men get the short end of the stick. Irvin’s father (another smoker) died in his 50s. Martha’s father, a diabetic, a drinker, and a smoker, died at 69. Neither of their wives smoked.

Having started smoking in her teens, Martha finally kicked the filthy habit about fifteen years ago, but by that time the damage had long since been done. She had been a heavy smoker for damn near 60 years. She was diagnosed with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), which would gradually consume her ability to breathe. For the past few years, she had to be on oxygen around the clock. Ultimately, she just could not breathe anymore. Joel and I were at her bedside as she quietly drew her final breath on December 7, 2011, the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day and the 50th anniversary of her father’s death.

Had she not had those strong genes, chances are good that she would not have lived past 70. However, her longevity was a mixed blessing. It was difficult to watch her bearing the ravages of COPD for so long. I simply cannot imagine what life would be like struggling for every breath and getting winded just walking to the bathroom. She put up with it somehow, incredibly. Martha had a remarkable will to live and a great capacity to endure hardship.

While Martha was fortunate in never needing to work for a living, she enjoyed volunteer work in many different areas. She was a competent knitter, and worked at various arts and crafts at various times. She loved to read as well.

If she could spend time anywhere she wanted to, it would probably be at the beach. For years she had a condo a couple of miles away from Dania Beach, where she often could be found.

She loved babies and small children. Later in life, her great-grandchildren, Jason and Cindy, brought her great joy.

She was a lifelong animal lover who had many pets through the  years. Until she was in her 60s, she was mainly a dog person, but she turned to cats for their aloof companionship in later years, with three felines roaming around her little two-bedroom condo at one point.

Martha was great at picking up strays, and that referred to people as much as animals. She was as much of a comfort to people with handicaps and disabilities as she was to mistreated animals.

She was a generous person with her time and her money to the extent that she contributed to a large number of charities, many having to do with animals or disabled veterans, rarely saying no to anyone. The last person on whom she wanted to spend her money was herself. I would have to fight with her to buy her lunch or dinner. She always wanted to pay the bill. Even as I became a grey haired old geezer, I couldn’t leave her house without her stuffing some money in my pocket.

Even with food, she would offer her dinner companions what was on her plate before she even ate any of it herself. Moreover, if one of us took her shopping at the mall, for example, all we would have to do is pick something up and look at it for Martha to quickly offer to buy it for us.

Another one of Martha’s traits was her quirkiness. She would blurt out the strangest things at the most inappropriate times. (Kinda like this Turkey, I hear you saying.) One day back in the 1980s she accompanied me and my girlfriend of the time to a flea market that was known for selling knock-off watches. Authorities at the time were cracking down on those things, so I’m sure Martha, who read the newspaper religiously, knew that was the case. Imagine what happened when we were looking around and, having not found the guy(s) with the knock-off watches, Martha asked a vendor in a voice that could be heard by half the people walking around the flea market, “DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE FAKE ROLEXES ARE???” Merchandise started disappearing below tables, accompanied by some uncomfortable glances.

As quirky as Martha was while her mind was functioning well, as dementia set in, she was even quirkier. Then, it was humorous to engage her in conversations in which she made up stories that would seem perfectly coherent to outsiders, but that we family members knew were impossibly fantastical for various reasons. It was sad to witness this decline.

Martha is survived by Joel and me, daughter-in-law Janet and girlfriend-in-law Jenny, one grandson, Marc, his wife Jennifer, two great-grandchildren, Jason and Cindy, and her beloved tiger striped kitty, Samantha, who has been adopted by Marc and Jen.

And now, the following public service message is sponsored by The Nittany Turkey.

Please do yourself and me a favor: If you are a smoker, stop now! If you are thinking about smoking, think again! Please do whatever you can do to avoid the ravages of that stupid-ass habit that has killed so many people in such cruel ways at the behest COPD, lung cancer, stroke, etc.  — and for what? A temporary buzz? As a son with both parents now gone due to the effects of smoking cigarettes, I’m begging you to give it up!

Back to Turkey business, I will have to be out of town over the next couple of weeks attending to the responsibilities associated with my mom’s passing away, so my postings here will likely be infrequent. Writing for me is therapeutic; if and when I find the time, I will write. Thank you all for understanding my lapse!