Jim O'Hora died Friday, and it was hard not to think of the words Joe Paterno had spoken earlier in the week at the Big Ten media days.
O'Hora had been a member of the Penn State football coaching staff for 31 years, the man with whom Paterno had resided for 11 years prior to Joe's marriage in 1961. Perhaps it was O'Hora, who was 90, Paterno was thinking of when he talked of the difficulty of reconciling the time demands of coaching with life beyond the field.
It's tough, Paterno said, "Every time you get a phone call from somebody who has a kid who's sick; you've got a wife that calls and says, 'Hey, so and so is dying.' I've got a lot of people at my age that are all gone. A lot of people who helped me get where I am."
O'Hora was all of that.
"Jim is one of the finest people I've ever known," Paterno said in a statement released by the school. "He was a big brother and a father to me. He was a great colleague, a wonderful football coach and a great father. Jim was one of those people you come across only once in a while. I will miss him very much."
O'Hora was a native of Dunmore who lettered three years at Penn State, served with the Navy in World War II and was a line coach and defensive coordinator for Penn State from 1946 to his retirement after the 1976 season. He was on the staff of four unbeaten teams and directed the defense of unbeaten teams in 1968, 1969 and 1973.
An annual award named for him was established at the school in 1977 to honor a defensive player for "exemplary conduct, loyalty, interest, attitude and improvement" each spring.
