Photo of the Day: A Happy Day in Happy Valley

Last weekend, I drove out to State College, Penn., to see a close male relative (whom I won’t name for fear of embarrassing him in front of the entire blogosphere, especially when I write that he graduated magna cum laude) at his commencement exercises at Penn State University. I had heard a number of things about the school in innumerable college football telecasts over the years; more during my relative’s four years at the school; and still more, unfortunately, with the shocking arrest on child-molestation charges of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, and the fall and death of legendary head coach Joe Paterno.

I won’t rehash my complicated thoughts on the case here (if you insist on knowing them, see my prior post on the subject). In any case, with Sandusky’s upcoming trial, it might all be a moot point. Legal proceedings hardly settle everything, but often they answer enough questions that, with the perspective of time, we’ll have enough to judge a human being in as close to entirety as possible in this life.

More than anything, as I took in the sights and sounds of this sprawling (more than 8,500 acres) campus, I couldn’t help but feel that the institution was an immensely lengthened shadow of a man. The minute or so that my family and I had to take pictures (including the one of myself accompanying this post) at the bronze Paterno statue outside Beaver Stadium was unusual. The afternoon before graduation, it was increasingly crowded with visitors who could care less that the man depicted died with a shadow cast over his life’s work—and on the day of commencement itself, the lines for photos were almost as ridiculously long as in front of the beloved Nittany Lion itself.

It was the same inside Berkey Creamery, the largest university dairy in the nation, where the “Peachy Paterno” can still be found on the menu. (Sandusky’s name, I’m told, was removed from the list of thick and rich ice-cream concoctions.) Nor was that end of the coach’s imprint on the university. Many of its most visible features—a library, sports museum, spiritual center—derive overwhelmingly from Paterno’s support and even direct dollar contributions. That impact calls to mind the quote associated with Christopher Wren, the architect responsible for rebuilding London after its devastating fire in 1666: “If you seek a monument, look around.”

Whatever Paterno’s sins of omission, the board of trustees has probably taken a greater hit in public esteem than the late coach. On Commencement Day, The Wall Street Journal reported the results of the latest board election. Three new trustees gained seats in an election with an unusually high level of interest (37,000 alumni—three times the prior year’s total—voted), with at least one on record as having said Paterno’s firing “outraged and inspired me.”

Veteran journalist Stephen Smith, in a commencement address at the School of Communications, told the new graduates that since last autumn, “In effect, you audited a real-life seminar in communications that cut across every discipline in this College.” Indeed: events were reported by journalists, with images shaped by film and video professionals, and shaped and responded to by specialists in advertising and public relations.

More generally, though, the Penn State imbroglio involved a vivid revelation  of adult life that the new graduates will encounter again and again from here on: misunderstanding, miscommunication, loss of faith in a person or institution, destruction of all they regarded as immutable in virtually no time flat—and, if the graduates are lucky, the ability to rise to their feet again as they await the next blow from life. It might take a long time to recur, perhaps years, but misfortune will strike again.

Maybe resilience in the face of discord and tragedy might be the best lesson learned by my young male relative and his fellow graduates these past four years in Happy Valley. In the lyrics of Bob Seger, especially prominent as I entered college: "Every time you keep control when you're cut off at the knees/Every time you take a punch and still stand at ease/Little victories."