I want to start off by saying that I live in Georgia, and have never really been a football fan-this isn’t some “I love Paterno because he is Penn State football” bullshit.

At the beginning of the year, my girlfriend’s (from here on I’ll call her “Katie”) dad (we’ll call him “Paul” for sake of clarity; also because that’s his name) was having a rough time with things. His elderly father’s health was rapidly declining and slipping into dementia, leading to violent behavior. He was evicted from several nursing homes. At the same time, Paul’s 2 year old cat began to rapidly lose weight and was unable to keep down any food. Things came to a head when, within the space of a weekend, the grandfather was asked to leave another care facility and suffered a stroke while in interim care in hospital. That Sunday, while Paul was making the 6-hour drive back from his sister’s house in Florida, Spike (the cat) became violently ill and was in such obvious pain that he had to be euthanized before Paul could even make it back.

After my gf spoke with her father that evening, she told me she thought he might have been crying. This man is not a crier. We began to discuss possible things we could do to at least help her dad feel better during this time when it seemed like the entire universe was conspiring to kick him in the penis. Anything that seemed like it may be even slightly helpful was way out of my price range; her dad’s main interests have always been Penn State Football, golf, and growing mustaches (in that order). Giving up on the idea of actually being helpful, I jokingly suggested getting JoePa to call and express his condolences.

The conversation continued for about an hour, but kept coming back to the Paterno phone call. Again as a joke I found Paterno’s phone number and showed it to my gf. At that point, we both realized that shit just got serious; I spent the next five minutes getting psyched up to call the Paterno residence at 9 PM to ask one of the most famous football coaches of all time to call one of the manliest men I have ever met and express his condolences over the death of a kitten…then I took a deep breath and hit send. Sue Paterno answered; I breathlessly rushed into my pitch. Contrary to expectations, Mrs. Paterno was incredibly personable and polite. She asked me to slow down and repeat myself, and spent the next five minutes listening politely (albeit skeptically) only interrupting to ask for clarification or offer advice. Ultimately, the conversation ended with her asking for Paul’s phone number and explaining that Coach Paterno was out of town for the evening but she would explain the situation to him the following morning and could offer no promises.

The next day, gf and I were cautiously ecstatic and decided not to tell anybody except her mother. Around 3:30 Katie got a call from her dad, unable to stop laughing. He started to say her name a few times and when he finally regained his composure, he said “Katie, please tell me that I did not just get a voicemail from Joe Paterno about my cat dying. Please tell me that you hired an impressionist…” Katie told him how everything went down, and he spent the rest of what would have been an otherwise shitty week laughing because his idol called him at home and left a voicemail to cheer him up after his cat died.

I realize that this doesn’t change anything that happened with Sandusky being filth, but it does say to me that Joe Paterno is the kind of person who at least tries to do the right thing, even if the right thing is ignoring a blatant invasion of your privacy to call a grown man you have never met and leave him a voicemail saying “Sorry about your cat.”

Source: marieleafbread