Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1533674
A P R I L 2 0 2 5 6 1 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M "Lou Prato was the authority on all things Penn State Athletics history," athletics director Patrick Kraft said in a prepared statement. "From the moment I met Lou, I could tell how much sharing the stories of Penn State meant to him and how important it was to him to keep those stories alive. His passion for this University was only matched by his love for his family. There will never be an- other Lou Prato, and we will miss seeing him around our Penn State Athletics events." UNIQUE INSIGHT If Lou's affection for Penn State was boundless, so too was his irritation with editors. As a freelance writer for many years, notably for Sport magazine, he'd had some bad experiences earlier in his career, and they left a few scars. I don't do this for other writers and will deny any knowledge of it if asked, but every month I would send Lou an edited draft of his story as a courtesy before it went to the printer. I felt like it was the least BWI could do, considering that he was giving us a kind of insight no one else could provide. Like clockwork, Lou would call shortly after receiving my email and compare the edited draft with the ver- sion he had submitted, peppering me with questions about every discrepancy. We would end up sparring over the ti- niest details — a word here, a comma there. Mostly, though, we battled over length. Lou had so much information in his head and was so eager to share it that it was sometimes hard to fit everything he wrote in the space allotted. Almost every month, the edited draft would be a little shorter than the original. He was quick to acknowledge an edit that he liked, and equally quick to acknowledge one that he didn't like. "Did you give this to your wife?" he would ask if he thought I'd trimmed too much from something he'd written. We never stayed mad at each other, though. Lou was the most good-natured curmudgeon I ever met. Once, in ex- asperation, I said to him, "Lou, even Hemingway had an editor. Do you think you're better than Hemingway?" He was still laughing about that weeks later. He didn't stay mad at my wife, either. At the time, she was an adjunct instruc- tor in the College of Communications, and whenever she needed a local celeb- rity to help her students practice asking questions, Lou was happy to oblige. The truth is, I learned more from him than he ever did from me. He made me better at my job by forcing me to jus- tify every choice, no matter how big or small. He had long since left academia, but he was still teaching. LABOR OF LOVE In 2021, BWI's ownership changed hands, and with new management came a new format. The history section was whittled down from three or four pages per month to the current two pages, with a cap of roughly 1,200 words. That left much less room for the kind of sprawling, discursive storytelling at which Lou ex- celled. He stuck with it for a while, but in the spring of 2022 he decided to bow out. In his farewell column that March, Lou recounted his jour- ney from BWI sub- scriber in the mid- 1980s to regular contributor. " T h a t wa s my version of the Yel- low Brick Road that Dorothy traveled in 'The Wizard of Oz,'" he wrote. Chronicling Penn State through its highs and lows was a labor of love for Lou, and his enthusiasm was evident in everything he did. He leaves behind a peerless body of work — profiles of his- tory-making figures like Jesse Arnelle, Lenny Moore and Dave Robinson, reflec- tions on Joe Paterno's immense legacy, and of course his account of the true ori- gin of the famed "We are …" cheer. It's telling that when Lou decided to step away from BWI, it was partly to de- vote his energy to another writing proj- ect — a book about Wally Triplett, the first Black letterman in Penn State foot- ball history and a member of the famed 1947 team that integrated the Cotton Bowl. Lou's fascination with PSU's his- tory and lore was endless. He always had another story he wanted to tell. When Lou retired from BWI, it fell to me to write the history feature each month. But really, it never stopped being his domain. I can't tell you how many times over the past three years that I've cracked open one of Lou's books looking for information or inspiration or both. His byline hasn't appeared in this maga- zine in a while, but his presence has been unmistakable. It would be hard to compress such a career into 1,200 words, and I can see by the little box at the bottom of the Micro- soft Word doc that I haven't come close to doing so. In extolling Lou's legacy, I've exceeded the limit by about 200 words. Honestly, I can't think of a more fitting tribute to the man. ■ "There will never be another Lou Prato, and we will miss seeing him around our Penn State Athletics events." A T H L E T I C S D I R E C T O R P A T R I C K K R A F T A longtime writer for BWI and the first director of the Penn State All-Sports Museum, Prato was the foremost authority on PSU's athletics history. PHOTO COURTESY PENN STATE ATHLETICS