 |
Joe Paterno, long-time Penn State football coach,
passed away after battling cancer. |
I couldn't have commented better on JoePa's passing than my writing partner, Matthew Heitzer, so I won't try:
"The world lost one of the most important and influential sports figures of the last 100 years today. A family lost their patriarch, their father, their grandfather.
The Penn State family lost a man - though obviously flawed - who really did try to make a positive difference in the lives of thousands upon thousands of people.
To the Paterno Family, my deepest heartfelt condolences.
To my larger Penn State family, while it is a confusing and conflicted time, I mourn with you and, too, try to make sense of what this man - whom I met only twice and never for more than a minute - meant to me and the University I am still proud to call my own.
And to those being glib, who choose only to focus on the scandal and the apparent failures of Coach in relation to it...to those who spend the day of this man's death posting snarky faux clever asides while your friends actually mourn...my mother said if you have nothing good to say about someone don't say anything at all, so you get my silence, except to say you should be ashamed of yourselves for inflating your own sense of worth on someone else's passing.
"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due."
RIP Coach,
Kara DeFrias, Penn State '07
