by Bill Moushey
Charles Pittman didn’t crack the starting lineup until the fourth game of his sophomore season, and then only because of an injury to the running back Bobby Campbell. Penn State had lost seven of its first thirteen games under Paterno, but with Pittman as a starter the Nittany Lions beat Boston College by a score of 50–28 on October 14, 1967. Penn State didn’t lose another game until after Pittman graduated in 1970.
The year before Pittman left, Penn State’s offensive line coach Joe McMullen took a job in San Jose, California. Paterno filled his vacancy with two people, both former graduate assistants. One was Jim Weaver and the other was Jerry Sandusky. Weaver was in charge of the center and the guards. Sandusky was in charge of tackles and tight ends.
Paterno had known Sandusky as a player at Penn State and had hired him as a graduate assistant in 1966. Sandusky then left for a series of other coaching positions. Paterno brought him back in 1969 for the McMullen position. Then, when the defensive coach Dan Radakovich left Penn State to become the defensive coordinator at the University of Cincinnati, Paterno asked Sandusky if he would switch to defense. “I’ll take it. I’ll take it,” Sandusky said. Before Radakovich left, he tutored Sandusky on the finer points of Penn State’s defense, and Sandusky compiled a defensive scheme the size of a city phone book.
Sandusky was a little surprised when Paterno first invited him back. The two had never been friends, and when he was a graduate assistant for the team, Paterno had often criticized him for being a goofball. However, he thought enough of Sandusky’s coaching ability to offer him the position.
Chapter 3
Sandusky Makes His Mark
Jerry Sandusky returned to Penn State at the age of twenty-five. For two years he had been on what those in his profession call “the coaching carousel.” He had served as a football assistant and basketball coach at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, a liberal arts college of 1,100 students located just thirty miles south of Penn State. He uprooted again in 1968 to become the offensive line coach at Boston University, a big-city school with a football team on the competitive college level. Then came the call that changed his life. Joe Paterno offered him a chance to return to Penn State as an assistant coach.
Sandusky would be back on the campus with the tree-lined paths and columned buildings in the shadow of Mount Nittany. He set down roots after that eight-hour drive from Massachusetts and would never leave the area again.
Sandusky had first come to Penn State in the autumn of 1962 as a wide-eyed freshman looking to find his way in life. He had been offered scholarships by several colleges because of his talents as a football player. He chose Penn State because he liked the pastoral setting, the football program was solid, and the school had a good academic reputation. One of his high school teammates, a running back named Bob Riggle, had also chosen Penn State, so Sandusky was going to know at least one other freshman player. He received a full scholarship to play football. In those days players played both offense and defense, but Sandusky was better suited to play defense. He wanted to get a degree in physical education, which might lead to a job as a teacher.
His father, Arthur, was a big sportsman long before he met his wife, Evelyn Mae “Evie” Lee. The two had grown up three doors apart from each other in the town of Washington, Pennsylvania, 150 miles west of State College. But it was sports that ultimately brought them together. A tomboy, Evie played in neighborhood baseball games with her six older brothers, and during one of those games she was on the opposing team against her future husband. They were married on July 25, 1942; their only son, Gerald Arthur, was born eighteen months later, on January 26, 1944.
Art was a trolley conductor and Evie was a housewife. To earn extra money, the couple opened a neighborhood business called Art’s Ice Cream Stand. When Jerry was eight, Art was asked to take over as director of the local recreation center, the Brownson House, named for Judge James Brownson of Washington County. Judge Brownson had purchased the former corporate offices of the Tyler Tube and Pipe Company and turned it into a gymnasium and activity center for neighborhood kids. The Brownson House had operated for fifteen years before being closed for a time when juvenile vandals did so much damage to the brick-and-stone building that it didn’t seem worth salvaging. Art quit his job at the trolley company to accept the director’s job in 1952 for a salary of $100 a month and a rent-free apartment on the third floor.
At the Brownson House, Evie taught nursery school and led a Brownie troop. Art did the cleaning, painting, plumbing, and electrical work. He also cut the grass, took care of the ball fields, and dug ditches to keep the community center in good working order. As its director, he supervised sports activities such as football, basketball, baseball, softball, wrestling, boxing, and gymnastics. He coached a football team called the Brownson House Bears, an amateur squad that grew out of the community center. A football field that adjoins the Brownson House is named after him. Art also played baseball in the minor league system of the St. Louis Cardinals for one year. He managed a youth baseball team in the PONY league, short for Protect Our Neighborhood Youth. His 1955 team won the PONY League World Series. He also started the Pennsylvania Junior Wrestling program, now known as Junior Olympics. For a lifetime of helping kids at the Brownson House, he was inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame for “meritorious service” to youth.
Art was well respected in the community, especially for his work with underprivileged kids. He always exhibited exemplary behavior around children. The sign in his office said, “Don’t give up on a bad boy, because he might turn out to be a great young man.”
The Brownson House provided Jerry with all kinds of new playmates. He called the place “the Bug House” because he thought the zany regulars met the definition of “crazy” or “buggy.” Like his parents, he found an outlet in sports. At Clark Elementary School he played midget football. His junior high school basketball team was undefeated. He was also on the football, baseball, and track teams at Washington High School. Besides sports, he was an elected member of the student council and and ran the film projectors for the Student Operators Society.
Jerry was also a prankster, according to several boyhood friends. One time in the high school chemistry lab he rubbed the earpiece of the telephone with charred cork, then snuck out and placed a call to the lab. When the teacher answered and put the phone to his ear, the charred cork left a black ring. Jerry and his friends liked to play tricks on the couples who parked along a lovers’ lane in Washington Park. Jerry would borrow his father’s red Ford pickup truck, equipped with a siren. With his buddies riding in the bed of the truck, Jerry would drive to the lovers’ lane and turn on the siren, watching in amusement as the occupants of the cars scrambled to put their clothes back on. Those same friends said that Sandusky never dated in high school or went to the prom, but he did play football well enough to get a full scholarship to perform under Rip Engle at Penn State.
Evie and Art hoped Jerry’s mischievous days were over when they drove their son to State College for his freshman year. One of the last legs of the trip took them by the yellow cornfields and rural villages along the winding curves of scenic State Route 45, a one-time stagecoach route that still shares the right-of-way with horse-drawn Amish buggies.
At Penn State Jerry was shy and didn’t date or go to many college parties. When he did hang out with buddies, he pulled childish stunts, like throwing water balloons from car windows. He was most at ease on team sports. He won the first of his three varsity letters as a sophomore. During his first year the Nittany Lions won seven of the ten games they played. They never had a losing season when Jerry was on the team.
In the summer of his senior year he met his future wife at a picnic in Little Washington. Dorothy “Dottie” Gross, originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, had lived in Little Washington for years but had never met Jerry Sandusky. Her family had recently moved to Chicago, so she was staying with friends in town for the summer. Jerry was a few months older than Dottie. S
he had red hair, worn in the bouffant style of the 1960s. At first Jerry couldn’t work up the nerve to ask her out on a date. His mother encouraged Dottie to watch him play in a softball game, and after the game he drove her home. She’d stop by the playground where he was working as the director and even helped him organize games with the kids. One time Dottie and Jerry went with a group to see the Pittsburgh Pirates play at Forbes Field. After she went back to Chicago, they stayed in touch through letters. In one Jerry told her, “You are my destiny.”
Jerry and Dottie were married in September 1966, three months after he graduated from Penn State with a degree from the College of Health Education. Number one in his class, he was the student marshal at the commencement ceremony.
AS PATERNO’S ASSISTANT, SANDUSKY COACHED the tackles on the offensive line. The chief guru of the defense was Assistant Coach Dan Radakovich, who had such success developing star players that he was called the Dean of Linebacker U. That year Penn State was undefeated for the second straight season, and the Nittany Lions were on their way to national prominence. When Radakovich left in 1970 to take a job at the University of Cincinnati, Sandusky assumed the responsibilities of coaching Penn State’s linebackers.
All the while Jerry and Dottie were living in a small house near the university. They wanted to start a family, but sadly discovered they couldn’t have children of their own. Jerry, however, did not lose faith. He was guided by a popular Sandusky family saying: “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it.” They served as fosters parents for several children through the child welfare agencies of Centre County and the Pennsylvania State Foster Parent Association. Then they decided to go the adoption route. Over the course of three decades they adopted three infants and three older foster kids, Kara, E.J., Jon, Jeff, Ray, and Matt. Kara, the oldest, was adopted after having been one of their foster children. Matt, the youngest, was taken in as a foster child at age sixteen and adopted two years later. The three adopted in infancy were found through appropriate agencies and adopted over twenty-eight years. Jerry’s motivation behind caring for foster kids and adopting the infants came from the work his parents did helping kids at the Brownson House.
Eventually the Sanduskys moved to a five-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot house on Grandview Road, right off East College Avenue. Four of the Sandusky children—Kara, Ray, E.J., and Jon—graduated from Penn State. E.J. was the starting center for the 1992 Nittany Lions and later served as head football coach at Albright College and as assistant coach at West Chester University. Jon was a two-year letterman as a defensive back at Penn State. After graduating in 2000 with a 3.79 grade point average in kinesiology, he served as a scout for the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League and later became the director of player personnel for the Cleveland Browns.
Jerry was at Penn State for eight years when he was named the university’s defensive coordinator, a position that made him a top lieutenant on Paterno’s staff. That year he wrote and self-published a manual on his coaching specialty, Developing Linebackers. It became a teaching tool on how to play the position. He used the meager proceeds from the book to launch a charity for disadvantaged youth, The Second Mile. It was incorporated in 1977. With legal help provided by a Penn State professor, The Second Mile was granted tax-exempt status that same year.
In the beginning Jerry ran the charity from his house, mentoring troubled kids, involving them in games and athletic endeavors in hopes of helping them turn their lives around. By 1980 he had raised $64,000 from the sale of his book, which he used to buy twenty acres of farmland two miles from Beaver Stadium, just outside State College. He built and opened a group home on the property, to be occupied by six “at risk” boys from the State College area and run by hired house parents. Local businesses donated the supplies to build it, and a local contractor constructed it for the cost of his labor. The first six boys took residence in 1982. They had been chosen to live there by local social agencies.
Once the home was up and running, it was easier for Jerry to solicit donations. Eventually The Second Mile opened its headquarters in State College and had offices in Harrisburg and the Philadelphia area. The charity reached out to children in all sixty-seven of Pennsylvania’s counties.
Besides running The Second Mile, Jerry served as the director of a summer football camp at Penn State that was sponsored by the university. The camp attracted hundreds of kids from all over Pennsylvania. Motivational speakers came to talk to the kids, and Joe Paterno sometimes made an appearance. Among the many volunteers was Guy Montecalvo, a native of Little Washington who had been mentored by Jerry’s parents at the Brownson House. Montecalvo had played football at Washington High School and was recruited by Sandusky to play at Penn State on a scholarship. At the Penn State football camp he helped entertain the campers with music and comedy skits. As an amateur singer and a piano player, he joined Sandusky in forming an impromptu singing group called the Bobbin’ Robins, which Jerry later changed to the Great Pretenders.
Montecalvo remembered Sandusky as a fun person. His interactions with the campers were of a playful nature. He was always in the middle of some activity, such as volleyball games or splashing around in the swimming pool. “The Jerry Sandusky I knew was a role model for what he did as a football coach and for the kids he reached out to at The Second Mile,” Montecalvo said. “He seemed to be one of the most compassionate and altruistic individuals I ever met.” Montecalvo insisted he never once saw any odd behavior involving Sandusky and a camper.
IN 1990 PRESIDENT GEORGE H. W. BUSH cited The Second Mile as the 294th example of his Thousand Points of Light. Suffice it to say The Second Mile garnered a lot of attention and support because of Sandusky’s relationship with Penn State. There was no way the charity would have grown so expeditiously without the benefit of its relationship with a high-profile university. Bush considered Joe Paterno a friend after Paterno campaigned for him in the 1980 Pennsylvania Primary. Paterno had also given a seconding speech on Bush’s behalf at the Republican National Convention in 1988 in New Orleans.
The Penn State connection also helped Sandusky’s annual charity golf tournament, which he started in 1981, by donating the use of its Blue and White golf courses. Soon former Penn State players were participating and big-name pro football players were lending their names to the event. The annual tournament, a popular three-day fundraiser, had honorary chairmen such as the former Penn State and NFL players Lenny Moore and Kyle Brady.
At its peak The Second Mile had $9.5 million in assets and $3 million in annual revenue. Its honorary board of directors was filled with important names in sports. Some of its distinguished directors included the former NFL coach Dick Vermeil, the Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid, NFL Hall of Famers Franco Harris and Jack Ham, former Penn Staters and NFL players John Cappelletti and Matt Millen, the former Penn State president Bryce Jordan, the golfer Arnold Palmer, and the actor Mark Wahlberg.
“Jerry was like a saint up here,” said Gary Gray, a former Penn State linebacker who was coached by Sandusky. “He was like a big kid. He was always touchy-feely. But he never drank or smoked, and I never heard him utter a curse word. He was a role model for a lot of people.”
What helped The Second Mile succeed was Penn State’s own achievement on the football field, due in no small part to Jerry Sandusky. He was the defensive mastermind who helped make Joe Paterno’s Grand Experiment an ultimate success. Sandusky devised defensive schemes that could stop opposing offenses, such as stacking a defense to stop a strong running attack, or zoning a defense to confuse a strong throwing quarterback.
Penn State’s first national championship came following the 1982 season in the Sugar Bowl, when the Nittany Lions defeated Georgia 27–23. Sandusky’s defense largely held in check Georgia’s star running back, Herschel Walker. Then, following the 1986 season, the 100th season of football at Penn State, the Nittany Lions won all eleven games and were ranked second in the country. They were pitted against top-ranked Miami
in the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl, the first time a corporate sponsor had paid to have its name attached to a college football game. Penn State was the underdog, but Sandusky’s defense forced seven turnovers, including five interceptions of Miami’s quarterback Vinny Testaverde. The final interception came on fourth down with eighteen seconds left in the game and Miami just yards away from the winning goal. The 14–10 win marked Sandusky’s finest hour as a defensive coordinator. He told sports writers afterward, “I’ve always prided myself on being able to handle pressure, but on that fourth down, I couldn’t even speak to make the defensive call. When it was over, I just walked over to the bench and sat down by myself and cried.” Playing against the future Hall of Fame wide receiver Michael Irvin and the highly touted running back Alonzo Highsmith, Penn State gave up 445 yards but allowed only one touchdown.
Athlon Publications, publisher of Athlon Sports magazine, named Sandusky the 1986 Assistant Coach of the Year. During the award ceremony Sandusky said, “Penn State’s my home. It’s more than just a place to make a living. It’s a place my family and I all love. Penn State spoils you. It’s just a great place to raise a family. I don’t know that you can explain the attraction. It’s a lot of small things. I guess you have to experience it.”
Working under Joe Paterno wasn’t easy. He was the dominant male on the football staff; what he said was gospel, and his assistants served obediently. There was friction because Joe would sometimes make the calls on defense and offense, taking away the responsibilities from his defensive and offensive coordinators. As early as 1966, when Sandusky was still a graduate assistant, Paterno was angry with him for getting to a drill late. Paterno was persnickety and had everything timed to the minute. Sandusky made a gesture as Paterno yelled at him to get with the program. He hadn’t noticed it at the time, but he saw it when he watched the films from the practice later. The next morning Paterno called Sandusky into his office and chewed him out. Sandusky mentioned the incident in Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story, which he wrote the year after his retirement from Penn State. He recalled that Joe told him, “I would like to be able to recommend you for future coaching jobs, but I don’t want to recommend a guy who’s going to act like a complete goofball.”
