When someone dies, you want to remember all the good things, ignore all the negative.
It's just what we do.
You want to think about the laughs a man like former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno provided during the Big Ten's preseason news conferences every summer in Chicago. He had a way of turning a monotonous event into a comedy show in his own way.
In recent years, it often came with a touch of old-man orneriness, often in his scratchy, mumbling voice. But it was always classic JoePa. Reporters looked forward to it every year.
He sat at a table a couple seasons ago, in his early 80s, talking about his desire to visit Greece one day.
"I'm a great fan of Alexander (the Great)," Paterno said, pausing before the punch line. "I don't want to chase women like he did. I'm not up to that."
When someone suggested after Paterno underwent eye surgery that he wouldn't look right on the sideline without his trademark thick-rimmed glasses, JoePa responded, "I'm going to get a cigar. They'll think it's Winston Churchill."
Another time he was asked for his opinion on all the scandals going on in college football. Referring to grown-ups who criticize the younger generation, Paterno said, "They ought to go back and read Socrates. Socrates, 400 years BC, said, 'The kids today are terrible, tyrants. They don't pay attention.' That's 2,500 years ago, OK?"
While most coaches were answering questions about the projected strengths and weaknesses of their teams for the upcoming season, Joseph Vincent Paterno had a knack for working Alexander the Great, Churchill and Socrates into his interviews.
He could be cantankerous, but his confrontations with the media often were playful at the same time. It became a routine in Chicago to get an annual update on Paterno's health and retirement plans. He knew the questions were coming at some point.
After being asked one more time about what brings him back year after year, Paterno replied, sarcastically, "Oh, I'd miss you guys. What would I do on a nice beautiful day in July?"
Paterno had a way of mocking things in his own, old-fashioned way. When Twitter was just becoming popular a few years ago, JoePa let everyone know what he thought about it.
The question posed to him was about his weak nonconference schedule, but Paterno ended up going into another of his off-the-wall rants.
"You guys have got to talk about something," he told a room full of reporters. "The fans have got to put something on those . . . what do you guys call those things? Twittle-do, twittle-dee?"
Once again, Paterno had left everyone chuckling and shaking their heads.
He was feisty with the media, but he had a good relationship with reporters overall. Otherwise, he wouldn't have taken time out of his schedule to sit around and talk at an on-campus reception the night before Penn State home football games.
Many schools held these cocktail parties back in the old days, but Paterno and Penn State continued the tradition long after others had stopped.
He would sit there and tell stories, entertaining all the reporters, especially the out-of-town guys. That exchange alone made the trip to State College, Pa., more than worth it every couple years.
Those are some of the memories, the good memories, of Joe Paterno, who died Sunday from lung cancer at age 85. You can't take them back. They will always be there.
Unfortunately, they are soiled by the scandal that rocked Penn State football last fall and led to Paterno being fired in November.
Jerry Sandusky, Paterno's former assistant coach, has been charged with several counts of child molestation, including an incident that allegedly occurred in the football team's locker-room shower in 2001.
While Paterno informed his bosses of allegations against Sandusky, many people believe Paterno should have done more to stop the alleged abuse.
While you'd like to focus only on those good memories of JoePa and block out the rest, it's not realistic — not for me.
To see people immortalize Paterno now, no matter how many great things he did over the years, is disturbing.
If you choose not to criticize him, that's fine. I respect that. Say nothing, do nothing.
But how can you praise him, glorify him, celebrate him like so many people are doing?
If I were a former or current Penn State player or one of Paterno's assistant coaches, and I was asked how I would remember him, I'd have to answer, "No comment," regardless of how much he meant to me.
Because at some point during that conversation, I'd have to say what's really in my heart, and it's not something you would want to share after someone who was important to you just died.
You want to talk about the great deeds of a great man.
But Joe Paterno didn't live up to it.
And that shouldn't — absolutely can't — be overlooked, even in his death.
