Take what you need and you leave the rest

Sometime before 1850, an Englishman named Thomas Clarkson came to live in Samson County, NC. He had actually been born on the Iberian peninsula in the colony of Gibraltar sometime around 1812. This might indicate that his father was in some way involved in the Napoleonic wars, but that’s not the war I am most interested in at the moment. At the age of 49, Thomas Clarkson enlisted with the 3rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment as a musician. His son, also named Thomas, enlisted with the unit as well. The elder Clarkson survived the war, the younger did not. Another son, Joseph, moved to Wilmington after the war, married, and had a son named Tomas Alexander Clarkson. After Joseph’s untimely death, mother and son came to be living in Nashville with her new husband. Thomas had a son, commonly known as Tommy. Tommy had a son, known mostly as Tom. Tom, my father, has a son (other than me), commonly known as Tadd.

All very quaint. Quaint except perhaps for the Civil War part, right? I don’t know for a fact that this side of my family ever held other people as slaves. I do know that these folks fought to uphold slavery. I also know that other people in other parts of my family held slaves. It’s something that anyone who grows up in a white family that has lived in the south for several generations might assume about their ancestors. I just happen to have documentation. So what is to be done with that. How does one reconcile a part of one’s history which is so clearly morally corrupt with other parts (exotic Gibraltar, adventurous moves) which are fascinating. It is, again, the dilemma of any Southerner.

It is also, now, the dilemma of any Nittnay Lion. Generations of families have grown up believing in Penn State. They have grown up believing in Joe Paterno. They have taken to heart the rhetoric of “doing things the right way.” That rhetoric and that legacy may have served them well. They may have made good businesses, good families, good lives based on the idea that there were certain traditions that actually made sense, and these traditions have served them well. At least up until now.

That administrators and coaches spent years covering up child abuse at Penn State is inexcusably reprehensible. The institution’s more recent efforts to completely and publicly account for all that took place are commendable. For all of those people who had made what they believed Penn State to stand for such a part of their lives, does this public acknowledgement of all that has gone wrong negate everything that has gone right? If not, what does still have value and what holds a stain that will never be removed? It’s a question that will be lingering in State College for many years. The Mason-Dixon line just shifted north.