With Donald Trump’s impending rally here at Penn State on Saturday, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on leadership and on values.
First, I want to mention that Donald Trump and I do agree on something. In 2012 Louis Freeh issued a now-debunked report that contained no evidence and intentionally erred in casting blame on Joe Paterno. Donald Trump made a series of Tweets defending Joe.
I wrote a letter thanking him for those Tweets and he sent me a letter in reply. That letter has since been published by him in a book of letters.
But that was 12 years ago… this is now. A lot has happened in those years.
In two days, Donald Trump will be on the Penn State campus. A friend called asking about his recent mention of now-deceased Arnold Palmer in Latrobe and wondered if and what he might say about Joe. He went on to ask what my father would say or think about all of this.
First, we should hope that campaign rallies and events focus on issues and the future.
As for what my father would think today, it is nearly impossible to speak for the dead. However, when considering what we might hear from people who’ve passed, the lessons of their lives are instructive.
As kids, we gathered before bedtime. Having washed up and brushed our teeth, two parents and five children donned in pajamas knelt together. We started a series of prayers first by saying “Good night, Jesus and thanks for making me healthy. God bless Mommy, Daddy, Diana, Mary Kay, David, Jay and George. God bless Grandmas and Granddads, aunties and uncles and everybody in the whole world.” (Note: George is my younger brother’s first name, but he goes by Scott).
The last line blessing everyone reflected a universal recognition of a shared humanity, an inclusionary outlook on the world born of life experience.
Our father grew up in Brooklyn and many of his formative years were in the 1930s. The United States was just a few years from laws enacted in the 1920s to limit or ban immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe and Italy. Xenophobic discrimination against Italians was very real in his youth.
After an enlistment in the Army, he returned to enroll to play football at Brown University. There was only one fraternity that would take him. And when a Jewish student wanted to join his fraternity, one brother kept putting a black ball in the secret voting box. Joe concocted the plan to force that brother to either admit his antisemitism or shut up, thereby allowing the Jewish student to join.
In his years as an assistant coach, he knew fellow Brooklynite Vince Lombardi, then an assistant for the New York Giants. Despite a great coaching reputation, Lombardi was often passed over for head coaching jobs.
He said to Joe, “I can’t get a job because I’m Catholic, I’m Italian and I’m not good-looking.”
Those comments stuck with Joe. Eventually both Lombardi and Joe got their chances. It is easy to think of the head coaches they became, without realizing the years spent overcoming the prejudices of their time.
Even after he became a head coach at Penn State there were rumors whispered amid great success. Rumors alleged that mafia connections were paying off officials to fix games for him. He heard the whispers, kept his mouth shut and let the quiet resentment drive him to work even harder.
I share this not to claim a mantel of victimhood for Joe Paterno, but rather to explain his view of what America can and should be. It explains what he and my mother passed on to the people in their lives.
As head coach, he set out to build something unique, something special, something better. He set standards of excellence in the classroom and on the field. Opportunity meant high demands and expectations for players of all backgrounds.
To him, the football huddle was an artistic masterpiece; strong, proud young men standing muddied and bloodied from the competition. They stood holding hands in common cause, Black, White, Latino, Pacific Islanders. Men from small towns, big cities, from here and abroad, bound together by a love for one another united in common cause.
His vision of leadership was building not bullying. We stand tallest when we bend to lift others. The sum of our humanity will always be greater than the individual parts. It was the extension of a welcoming outstretched hand and not a clenched fist.
He believed that we should define ourselves by what we stand for and not what we stand against. We build the greater good through the concept of “E Pluribus Unum” from the many, one. That was done not by an insistence that only one way was the right way, but by building consensus and compromise.
He had quotes from Lincoln taped to his desk blotter that referred to “the better angels of our nature” and “faith let us to the end do our duty as we understand.”
He and his wife built libraries to fill with books, not ban them. They sought to expand learning, never fearing pursuit of knowledge. No future is secure without an understanding of the past.
It was patriotic to question the conventional wisdom. In his book “Football My Way,” written in 1971, he expressed an understanding of college students and the anti-war movement. “The students were angry, and they reacted. I don’t condone violence, but I understand it. They don’t want to fight a war that our country has had trouble justifying. I’d hate to be a 19- or 20-year-old kid and have to go to Vietnam.”
He was a true believer in judging people by “the content of their character.” He stood firm against prejudice and racism. And yet, he understood how some came to those views and had the courage to try to change hearts shaded by fear or hardened by hatred.
At a restaurant in State College in the earliest days after 9/11, a group of Muslim students entered and sat down. Around the room there were stares and tension. Joe approached the students and asked how they were doing to put them at ease. That act bore witness to the Christian ideals of welcoming the stranger. To him that was being truly American.
In 2002 he was asked why the team did not have the American flag on their helmets and he said, “The only thing we have to prove is what have we done to make America better; what do we stand for day in and day out? I’m reluctant to just put symbols up. I think actions are important.”
Actions over words, actions over symbols.
Coaching was about education and about service. Winning in life was measured by what you did for others. For decades, Sue has given her soul to Special Olympics, holding the athletes in her heart as if they were her own children.
Those ideals endure.
It stands in stark contrast to what passes for leadership and values today. Bullying is seen as tough leadership. Autocratic rule is the organizational flow chart in organizations and boards in far too many places.
Demeaning others is how some build themselves up. We measure ourselves not by what we do for others, but by the amount of money we amass. Those are the hallmarks of small people, people seeking validation by artificial means.
He rejected those ideas.
Leadership was grounded in core values. It meant standing for those values even as the breezes of the latest whims became howling tempest winds. We stand for what is right and against what is wrong. We do not waver.
These were the things that we learned. These are the examples of life that are enduring and instructive.
At Penn State we cheer “We Are Penn State.” WE are –not I or me.
For 46 years as head coach, before and after every game, Joe Paterno knelt with his team, joined hands and prayed the Our Father. It wasn’t a prayer to win; it wasn’t a prayer asking God to favor us over our opponents.
It is a non-denominational prayer where every pronoun is plural…”WE/US/OUR”. That is why he picked it. Because it is inclusive; it speaks to our common humanity. It asks for OUR daily bread, for God to forgive us OUR sins as WE forgive others and to deliver US from evil. It was not a prayer for wealth, or power, or domination of one sect over another. It is a prayer asking that we provide for all.
That is what WE learned from the example of his life. And as this election turns into the home stretch, and as Donald Trump arrives on campus, we all have our own decisions to make.
And while our family all learned from visionary parents, we may disagree. I know not what my siblings may do on Election Day. But I do know that the lessons of those parents have instilled a set of values and a worldview that guides us still.
So, when I am asked about what my father’s views may be, I cannot speak for the dead. Although he is gone, his life speaks to me and through me.
For me that voice tells me to vote for service over selfishness, for the outstretched hand over the clenched fist and for building over bullying. That is why my ballot will be marked with a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz.
