Apr 23, 2014 02:55 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, Joe Paterno's statue was removed from campus, but the late football coach may be getting immortalized in downtown State College.

ESPN reported two Penn State alumni are organizing a project to put a new statue of Paterno sitting on a bench reading Virgil's "Aeneid." The project organizers hope to have the statue outside the Tavern Restaurant by Nov. 2015.

Kim Intorre, one of the organizers, said the State College community is ready to honor Paterno even though the university is not.

"There's been some level of frustration among Penn Staters with what happened with the statue at the stadium," Ted Sebastianelli, a project organizer, told OnwardState.com. "We wanted to come up with a way to honor Joe for all that he did for the State College community. It wasn't just the university he impacted - it was the whole town."

Sebastianelli is a Board of Trustees candidate and a former Penn State Football Letterman's Club president. He said the team wanted to place his widow, Sue Paterno, next to him or behind him, but she was not interested.

The group plans to start a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter in July to raise $50,000, but they have already hired artists Zenos Frudakis for the project. He is aware the project will be controversial, but he is not concerned. However, the organizers want to depict Paterno away from football to emphasize his family's impact in the community.

After Sandusky's arrest on child sex abuse charges, news began unraveling that Paterno and a number of school administrators knew about the crimes and did nothing. The university decided to remove a statue of Paterno outside the football stadium in light of the allegations. Paterno was fired Nov. 11, 2012 and died Jan. 22, 2013.

The NCAA stripped Paterno of 111 wins as part of their sanctions against the school. The coach had previously won 409 games in a 45-year career.

OnwardState.com reported the school will honor Paterno in some way in the future.

"There's a culture of people in State College that clearly appreciates what Joe has done," Sebastianelli said. "Our alumni always want to know how we will honor him. This is something we can do for State College while getting Penn Staters from around the country involved. This has nothing to do with university. We are doing this on our own."

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