Thousands keep vigil at Joe Paterno funeral

Thousands kept vigil in frigid weather outside a funeral home on Wednesday where family and friends of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno gathered to mourn a man whose towering image was shaken by a child sex abuse scandal at the school.

Paterno, 85, who died of lung cancer on Sunday, was head coach at Penn State for 46 years, won more games than any other major-college football coach and two national championships.

But he was fired in November after a former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, was charged with serial sex abuse. University trustees dismissed Paterno because he failed to tell police what he had been told about the alleged abuse.

Paterno's burial was set for later on Wednesday, with a final public memorial due on Thursday.

Tens of thousands of people lined the street outside the campus Pasquerilla Spiritual Center in State College, Pennsylvania, in response to a campaign on Facebook to "Guide Joe Paterno Home," forming a gantlet covering much of the mile and a half (2.5 km) to Penn State's football stadium.

"It shows how much of an icon he was and how many hearts he touched directly and indirectly," said Christina Flanaghan, 21, a third-year student at Penn State.

Among those attending the funeral was former quarterback Mike McQueary, who as a graduate assistant in 2002 told Paterno he walked in on Sandusky molesting a boy in the showers.

Paterno told university officials but not police.

Sandusky, 67, who maintains his innocence, faces 52 criminal counts accusing him of molesting 10 boys over 15 years, using his position as head of The Second Mile, a charity dedicated to helping troubled children, to find his victims. The court has placed him under house arrest.

Also attending the funeral was former Penn State and Pittsburgh Steelers running back Franco Harris, a pro football Hall of Famer who was perhaps the biggest star to play for Paterno.

Some 27,000 mourners passed by Paterno's closed casket for a viewing on Tuesday and 10,000 others on Wednesday, said Bob Smith, director of the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center.

Among the final mourners was actor Billy Baldwin, who did not attend Penn State but attended many wrestling matches there in the 1980s. During that time, he said, he got to know Paterno, and had dinner at the Paterno home.

"I can't use words to describe the enormous, immense level of respect I have for the guy," Baldwin said.