STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The statue of Joe Paterno was taken down from outside the Penn State football stadium Sunday, the same day the NCAA announced it would be issuing sanctions against the university whose top officials were accused in a report of burying child sex abuse allegations against a now-convicted retired assistant.
Workers lifted the 7-foottall statue of Penn State’s former football coach off its base and used a forklift to move it into Beaver Stadium as 100 to 150 students watched, some chanting, “We are Penn State.”
The university announced earlier Sunday that it was taking down the monument in the wake of an investigative report that found the late coach and three other top Penn State administrators concealed sex abuse claims against Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky was convicted last month of 45 counts of sexual abuse of 10 boys.
The NCAA also said Sunday that that it would levy“corrective and punitive measures” against Penn State because of the Sandusky scandal. The organization said it would detail the sanctions today but did not disclose any more details.
NCAA President Mark Emmert hasn’t ruled out the possibility of shutting down the football program in the wake of the scandal, adding that he had “never seen anything as egregious.” ESPN and CNN reported Sunday that the NCAA was not planning to force Penn State to dissolve its football program.
The Paterno family issued a statement only hours later saying the statue’s removal “does not serve the victims of Jerry Sandusky’s horrible crimes or help heal the Penn State community.”
“We believe the only way to help the victims is to uncover the full truth,” said the family, which vowed its own investigation following the release of the report by former FBI director Louis Freeh.
The family called the report “the equivalent of an indictment - a charging document written by a prosecutor - and an incomplete and unofficial one at that.”
Paterno’s widow, Sue, and two of the couple’s children visited the statue Friday as students and fans lined up to get their pictures taken with the landmark. The statue, weighing more than 900 pounds, was built in 2001 in honor of Paterno’s record-setting 324th Division I coaching victory and his “contributions to the university.”
Penn State President Rod Erickson said he decided to have the statue removed and put into storage because it “has become a source of division and an obstacle to healing.”
“I believe that, were it to remain, the statue will be a recurring wound to the multitude of individuals across the nation and beyond who have been the victims of child abuse,” Erickson said in a statement.
Construction vehicles and police arrived shortly after dawn Sunday, barricading the street and sidewalks near the statue, erecting a chain-link fence and then concealing the statue with a blue tarp. Workers used jackhammers to free the statue and a forklift to lower it onto a flat-bed truck that rolled into stadium garage bay about 100 feet away.
Much of the work was hidden by blue tarps strung across temporary chain link fences while barricades kept observers on the other side of the street. Few watching said they understood the decision and feared what kind of punishment the NCAA would pile on.
Derek Leonard, 31, a university construction project coordinator who grew up in the area, said the construction workers on the project told him it was like watching a funeral when the statue was lowered onto the truck and then rolled away. He said he didn’t completely agree with the decision but worried more that the NCAA would shut down the football program.
“It’s going to kill our town,” he said.
The university president said Paterno’s name will remain on the campus library because it “symbolizes the substantial and lasting contributions to the academic life and educational excellence that the Paterno family has made to Penn State University.”
The statue’s sculptor, Angelo Di Maria, said he was upset to hear the statue had been taken down.
“It’s like a whole part of me is coming down,” he said. “It’s just an incredibly emotional process. When things quiet down, if they do quiet down, I hope they don’t remove it permanently or destroy it. His legacy should not be completely obliterated and thrown out. ... He was a good man. It wasn’t that he was an evil person. He made a mistake.”
The bronze sculpture had been a rallying point for students and alumni outraged over Paterno’s firing four days after Sandusky’s Nov. 5 arrest and grief-stricken over the Hall of Fame coach’s death Jan. 22 at age 85.
It turned into a target for critics after Freeh’s report alleged a cover-up by Paterno, ousted university president Graham Spanier and two Penn State officials, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz. The report found that their failure to report Sandusky to child welfare authorities in 2001 allowed him to continue molesting boys.
Sports, Pages 13 on 07/23/2012