Underlyig Lesson

Everyone has an axe to grind regarding the Penn State situation. With Joe Paterno's death yesterday, the voices are louder and more insistent. "Now that truth can come out!" "Joe died of a broken heart!" "Joe failed in his moral obligation!" "Joe transformed Penn State from a cow college to a respected research university!"

Whatever "the truth" might be, there is an underlying lesson in all of this. Your life, your sense of self-worth, should never be tied to an institution. Joe devoted sixty plus years of his life to Penn State. When things got bad (regardless of whose fault it was), he was dismissed with a phone call.

I devoted thirty years of my life to my employer. I never took all my vacation. I came to work the morning after flying in from a job site at midnight the night before. I worked seven days a week up to eighteen hours a day during construction and start-ups. I never took "comp time". Five days after receiving my 30 year pin, I was "downsized". My boss probably would have preferred to dismiss me with a phone call, but I was sitting in my cubicle at the time wondering why my phone was disconnected.

When times get tough, no matter how much you love the institution, it will not love you back. No matter how many sacrifices you made for it, it will cut you loose if that means its own preservation. As Michael Corleone said in "The Godfather", "It's not personal. It's business."

We all want that Retirement Dinner with the glowing tributes and the gold watch. So few of us actually get it. If anyone in the history of Penn State deserved to be at the head table for that emotional send-off, it was Joe Paterno. But what we deserve from an institution and what we get are often two very different things.