Giving 'Em Fitz: Farewell to the King of State College

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Hi, Joe. Sorry for the belated goodbye. Sure hope your current transition turns out better than that last one.

Anyway, I saw your son, Jay, on Monday morning. He was out walking before dawn, the way you did for so many years. As he passed Beaver Stadium, he was moved to see your illuminated image on one of those giant videoboards, gazing down at State College from the darkness like some benevolent god.

That got me thinking. It's too bad that in the last few months, when you finally had time for something other than football, you never got a chance for one last walk around the town that was your home for more than six decades.

You'd have been amazed.

During your early-morning strolls - during your entire life here, really - you were always so obsessed with X's and O's that I doubt you paid much attention to the world that was blooming all around you.

You probably never noticed how much things had changed since that afternoon in May 1950 when you and Rip Engle rolled into town in the coach's Cadillac.

But while you were busy studying game film on Michigan State or schmoozing some recruit's parents, you made a big difference here.

That's what your father always counseled, wasn't it?

"Whatever you do in life, Joe, try to make a difference."

In fact, you made such a difference, and the outpouring of sentiment here since your passing on Sunday has been so overwhelming, that I'm surprised no one has yet suggested that they rename this place Paternoville.

I mean, let's face it, State College was a cow town and Penn State a cow college when you arrived here as a restless 23-year-old. The only way you got here back then was via these narrow mountain roads. And there really was no reason to get here.

Now, thanks to the Nittany Lions football program you built, and its huge following, there are interstates such as 99 to get you here and get you out. There's an airport big enough to accommodate Big Ten charters. The university is first-class. There's even a couple of spots where you can get some good macaroni and a Jack Daniels.

Penn State's campus, which back then was little more than a cluster of buildings surrounding Old Main, has expanded like Ralph Friedgen's waistline. There are more than 40,000 students here now. Every one of them knows you and will remember you forever.

Penn State football was just a pleasant diversion in 1950. But you took what Rip started and transformed it into a first-class enterprise, one that costs millions, makes millions, entertains millions. It's undoubtedly the state's best-loved institution, even more so than Clyde Peeling's Reptiland.

And you deserve most of the credit.

State College and Penn State grew up around you and your program. If you had gone to law school as you'd planned, if your teams hadn't won and filled Beaver Stadium so consistently, this place might be no different than West Lafayette, Ind., or, God help us all, Iowa City, Iowa.

Look at Beaver Stadium. I know that, aesthetically, it's as ugly as Penn State's uniforms. But it's enormous. And the money it generates. Wow. It's become a veritable ATM for Penn State.

You got here early enough to have coached at Beaver Field, a 30,000-seat facility crammed into the middle of campus, near the Nittany Lion Inn. It was so small and unadorned that the players had to change in an adjacent water tower.

But your old AD, Ernie McCoy, was so impressed by Rip and you that he disassembled Beaver Field and moved it to a remote corner of campus that previously had been reserved for cows and pigs. He relocated the livestock, put the steel and metal back together, surrounded it all with parking lots and called it Beaver Stadium.

Since you took over for Rip in 1966, they've expanded the stadium at least five times. It holds 106,000 people now. And where there once were cornfields and meadows, there now stands a baseball stadium, an arboretum, dormitories, and a 15,000-seat arena where they play - or try to play, anyway - basketball.

Because your Nittany Lions were so successful, Beaver Stadium was filled every football Saturday. Those 106,000 people needed places to sleep and eat and drink. Your teams were an economic engine for central Pennsylvania and made Centre County one of the fastest-growing in the state.

Penn State football developed such an allure that legislators flocked to your games, and in return gave the university whatever it wanted. I'll bet there aren't many of their offices that don't include a photo of themselves posing with you.

On your walks through campus you probably missed the names on all the the new buildings. Schreyer. Smeal. Clemens. If they weren't former players, they were donors who admired you or were inspired by you.

And a couple of those buildings bear your name. The old library, once tiny and ill-equipped, has quadrupled in size thanks to you and the millions you and your wife donated. It's got a handsome, arched entrance, and in the lobby there's a nice oil painting of you and Sue.

That's in the library, not the football stadium. That's the kind of reverse psychology you implanted here. How many schools, after all, do you know where the football stadium and basketball arena are named for college presidents and the library for a football coach?

I know you were familiar with Holuba Hall and the Lasch Football Building. You probably already explained to St. Peter why you spent more time there than at home. Can you believe those facilities? What would Rip have thought?

Holuba houses an indoor football field. You must have loved it. No canceled practices. No reporters or students peering over fences. Just one walled football sanctuary.

And, though I know Jerry Sandusky has tarnished the place forever, how about that Lasch building? It's got workout rooms, theaters, study halls and several labs stocked with those pesky computers you never quite grasped.

All this isn't to suggest everything here has changed.

Your old College Heights neighborhood, for example, where you lived the last 46 years of your long life, looks much as it did when you bunked there in Coach Engle's house in those early days.

And the State Theater on College Avenue, the one that was playing John Wayne's The Kentuckian when you arrived, is still around. John Wayne's gone, though.

Overall, though, this town changed dramatically in the last 61 years, even if you never did.

I know you always admired Aeneas, the mythical Trojan hero who built Rome. Well, what you accomplished here in State College, no matter how messily it all ended, wasn't too shabby, either.

I've got one last question. I wonder if you ever stopped to appreciate just how lovely this valley is?

It was springtime when you got here. The green hills were lush with laurel. The little homes surrounding the campus were neatly tended. You could smell promises in the air.

You exited in winter, completing nature's cycle, on the day after a snowfall coated those same hills and icicles sparkled like diamonds from the little homes' eaves.

And the promises, most of them anyway, were fulfilled.

TUESDAY: Public viewing at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center, 1 p.m. to 11 p.m.

WEDNESDAY: Public viewing at the Pasquerilla center, 8 a.m. to noon; private family funeral service, 2 p.m.

THURSDAY: Public memorial service, Bryce Jordan Center, 2 p.m.