The men who did the casting work for the original Joe Paterno statue are making two new ones in a secret location.
Yesid Gomez and Wilfer Buitrago said Sunday they are hard at work in a secret location creating two new statues without school or family approval. One, they said, would be donated to the Paterno family, while the other would be displayed at various locations to support Penn State. The new model features Paterno holding up a fist in defiance.
“Penn State should have given us the courtesy of contacting us when they removed the statue and letting us know where it is,” Gomez told Rob Tornoe of Philly.com. “Instead, they are not responding to us, so we decided to bring the statue back again.”
The two men are financing the $100,000 project themselves.
“At this point, we don’t have a sponsor,” said Gomez. “We’re not worried about money, we’re worried about making a statement.”
The only statement being made here is that some members of the Penn State community remain wildly out of touch with what happened. Joe Paterno was complicit in the child abuse scandal and allowed the environment to continue, but people are willing to give him a pass because he was a successful football coach.
The original Paterno statue was removed in 2012. Some members of the Board of Trustees reportedly didn’t even want to do that.
