Posnanski writes that when he started high school, Paterno was already a rising star. "Joe was already an overachiever," he wrote. "He worked in the New York Public Library; he worked as an usher for the Brooklyn Dodgers; he was a baggage checker at Penn Station. He took the lead in school – straight A's, always – and he took the lead in the neighborhood. Everyone who grew up with him remarked on his solemn sense of purpose.... 'He was a fun guy to be around,' his friend Joe Murphy said. 'But, absolutely, you could tell he had it in his mind that he was going places. We all recognized it."
