Joe Paterno

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — It’s almost as if Joe Paterno were speaking from beyond the grave, even though the 85-year-old former Penn State coaching icon, who died Sunday of complications from lung cancer, has yet to be interred.

The private burial won’t take place until Wednesday afternoon in this college town he so came to love. But for those not among the select few family members and close friends who can gain entry to the cemetery, there were to be public viewings Tuesday and Wednesday morning at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on campus. There will be a public memorial service at 2 p.m. Thursday in the Bryce Jordan Center.

Those fortunate enough to have had access to Paterno in the last few days of his remarkable life are telling mourners to dry their tears, because Joe Paterno wanted it that way. If some of JoePa’s many admirers feel they have reason to be bitter at the way his 62-year employment at Penn State was terminated on Nov. 9 in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual-abuse scandal, that’s on them. Joe Paterno left this world content and at peace with himself and what he accomplished, in stark contrast to those who suggested his firing by the Board of Trustees left him a heartbroken and disillusioned man.

That’s the joyous and hopeful message a dying Paterno conveyed to his children and to Sports Illustrated senior writer Joe Posnanski, who is working on a book about the winningest football coach in Division I history that will be published in September.

In a piece he authored for the Jan. 30 issue of SI, Posnanski, who spent several weeks interviewing Paterno after the firing, describes someone who harbored no hard feelings toward anyone, even those who choose to portray him as somehow culpable concerning the heinous acts allegedly committed against underage boys by Sandusky, his longtime former defensive coordinator.

Excerpts of Posnanski’s SI article can be found on SI.com, and read thusly:

In the moments after Joe Paterno died, it became common for people to write and say that he died of a broken heart. Joe Paterno did not. Joe Paterno died of lung cancer and the complications it caused. Joe Paterno did not die a bitter or broken man.

I know this because I spent time with Paterno in his hospital room during the last weeks of his life. I am writing a book about Paterno. We spoke different times about many things — from his days playing stickball in the streets of Brooklyn, to his time in the Army after World War II, through his playing days and his many coaching days, to, yes, the day a graduate assistant coach told him about seeing Jerry Sandusky in the shower with a young boy — and what stood out above everything else is that Paterno refused to be bitter or sad about the way it all ended.

"In every life," Joe Paterno told me, "there have to be some shadows. Look at me. 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?"

Posnanski also writes that until his health took an irreversible turn for the worse, Paterno planned to treat his wife of nearly 50 years, Sue, to a six-week "honeymoon." The idea was to make up for the abbreviated, three-day getaway to Virginia Beach, Va., they took when they got married, which was briefly interrupted when he dropped in on a potential recruit along the way. Sadly, that won’t happen now.

Lest anyone believe that Posnanski — who wrote a lengthy and quite moving SI article in the Oct. 26, 2009, issue on the positive influence JoePa’s father, Angelo, had on him from childhood on — is blowing, uh, sunshine to help sell copies of his yet-unpublished book, Paterno’s children are telling similar tales of a father who faced death with the same cheery outlook he held fast to throughout his life.

"My father did not have a broken heart," Paterno’s daughter, Mary Kay Holt, told Posnanski. "His heart was too strong. It couldn’t be broken."

Added son Scott Paterno, to the Associated Press: "Even at the end, when it was clear that he passed a line of no return, (there) was never a moment of bitterness. Joe Paterno was serenely calm, even right up to the end."

Scott told AP a story about his dad’s hospital room. There were no flowers or balloons in the room, probably given away by Sue Paterno to other patients.

The only memento was a Penn State sweatshirt.

"His life is Penn State, through and through," Scott Paterno said. "Joe Paterno understood that, and it never once occurred to him to be bitter toward Penn State."

Joe Paterno