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.