Joe Paterno Sings With Our Choir

I met Ron Smith soon after we started attending Rose Drive Friends Church in Yorba Linda, CA. Ron was from Mont Alto, PA, about 17 miles west of Gettysburg. He had graduated from Penn State and, like me, had a degree in Chemical Engineering. He had worked for Union Carbide in West Virginia after graduation and had been transferred to the West Coast in sales and when they wanted to move him to Chicago, quit to set up his own business making mold sets used to make diamond segments for concrete and asphalt cutting blades. He closed his business in 2011, retired, and has been living in Anaheim ever since.

Ron was easy to get to know. We both sang on the church choir and with our common backgrounds of being from Pennsylvania, graduating from Penn State, and having chemical engineering degrees, we quickly became good friends. Ron had a great sense of humor so we shared many laughs together.

On one of Ron’s trips back to PA to visit a brother who lived in State College, PA (the town where the main campus of The Pennsylvania State University is located), he came back to CA with a life-sized carboard image of Penn State’s iconic head football coach, Joe Paterno.

One Sunday, we decided that we would play a trick on our choir director, Mark Miller. So just before we started our warm-up for the morning’s choir anthem, we dressed Joe in one of our choir robes and put him on the floor behind our chairs where no one would notice. Then, when Mark asked the choir to stand for our warm-up, we set Joe upright between the two of us in the choir. (Note the tie hanging out of my choir robe. During football season, I would wear my Penn State tie and intentionally let it hang out the front of my robe. Someone would invariably remind be that my tie was hanging out before we would go into the church for the service.) Mark didn’t notice right away, but soon after we started our warm-up singing, Mark glanced in our direction and noticed Joe standing there. His reaction was classic: he didn’t stop his directing, but it was obvious from the smile that came across his face that he had seen Joe.

At the end of the song, Mark acknowledged Joe as a guest singer in the choir and said the Joe was the only one in the choir who kept his eyes on the director for the entire song.

It was a memorable beginning to a great Sunday morning worship service!

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