From all corners, they came to pay respect to the Penn State icon

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Outside the Sleep Inn, a so-so hotel set behind a Snappy's gas station, the flags had been lowered to half-staff. On College Avenue, the workers at McLanahan's Student Store taped a simple paper symbol to the front window: a red Valentine's heart, broken in two.

Pennsylvania State University football coach Joe Paterno has been honored since his death this week by stars and dignitaries, by former NFL players and top elected officials. President Obama phoned the family to offer condolences, and former President George H.W. Bush told reporters he was deeply saddened.

But underneath the large, public expressions are quieter voices, more subtle memorials, and handmade, heartfelt tributes from people who hold no political office, who will never be nominated for a Hall of Fame or receive a lifetime achievement award. People who took off from work to drive hours from Pittsburgh, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey for the privilege of saying a moment's goodbye.

Paterno was buried here Wednesday following two days of often-emotional public viewings at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on campus, where the line to get inside stretched for blocks.

"I'm not allowed out of the house, but I'm here," said Crystal Evans, slowed by multiple sclerosis and pneumonia, and leaning heavily on crutches as she waited outside Wednesday. "How could we not do it?" She and her friend Jannette Olenchick had driven from near Huntington, W. Va.

Near them stood men in expensive suits, with coiffed silver hair and buffed shoes. But also, old men in worn Penn State sweatshirts, people who never forgot the day they bumped into Paterno on the street - and he said, sure, he had a minute for them to snap a picture. People who themselves will never appear on TV, where Paterno seemed to live on fall Saturdays, and who mostly never met the man but revered him all the same.

Some made their way forward in wheelchairs and on canes. Some carried babies or book bags, and some carried only their grief.

They and others here say that even if Paterno could have done something more, or done something differently, to stop the devastating child sex-abuse scandal that has enveloped the school, that one failure didn't compare to a lifetime of service and commitment.

Many on campus and in town said they couldn't get seats to the public memorial service set for Thursday at the 16,000-seat Bryce Jordan Center - the tickets were gone in minutes. For them, the Paterno statue outside Beaver Stadium has had to serve as shrine and gathering place, and people arrived day and night throughout the week.

At Paterno's bronze feet, they left old Penn State football tickets, blue-and-white jerseys, and wooden crosses. They left enough flowers to plant a field, and so many prayer candles that when the wind shifted, the heat coming off them was warming.

One person left a drawing of Paterno with angel's wings stepping through the gates of heaven, another the block-lettered words of Benjamin Disraeli: "Great services are not canceled by one act or one single error."

Paterno was dismissed on Nov. 9 by the university's board of trustees after 46 years as head coach, amid criticism that he had not responded forcefully to a report of child sexual abuse committed by former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. He died Sunday at 85.

"For this to be the final few pages of his life, it's terrible," said Sue Shilke, wiping away tears. After he was fired, she was so upset that she wrote him a letter, imploring him not to despair.

"Hang in there," she pleaded. "All the work you've done is not lost."

She and her mother, Millie Shilke, 88, drove three hours from the Deer Creek area of Maryland to say goodbye - and perhaps exorcise some of the pain surrounding Paterno's sudden firing.

Penn State is a big university, but it sits in a small town - and in the 1960s Shilke roamed it as a child, her mother the head nurse at the campus health center, her father employed at the airport.

To the Shilke family, the people indicted and accused in the scandal - including two ranking Penn State officials who allegedly failed to report the abuse - are not strangers glimpsed on the evening news. They're people with whom they shared the same schools and attended the same events. The night the news broke, Millie Shilke, long retired, couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"But I went to church with Jerry," she said over and over. "But I went to church with Jerry. . . ."

As she spoke, the wind bit, blowing over signs and mementos.

"All the seasons . . ." said George Singer, who came from Dallas, near Scranton, to say farewell.

"We had to be here," said his friend Neil McAndrew, a 1977 graduate. "It was like coming to see a friend."

Except, of course, that the friend was gone.

Bob and Anna Mae Leyburn, both 1950s Penn State graduates, drove nearly four hours from their home in Asbury, N.J., north of Clinton, so they could light a candle for Paterno.

"Had to do it," she said.

"You have to be a hard-hearted person not to shed a tear," said Bob Leyburn.

And then he did.