More than 20,000 pay respects to beloved leader

He was the people's prophet.

It wasn't just the fact that he led The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for nearly 13 years, or traveled almost a million miles to conduct the church's business, or helped spread the faith and its message in ways few could have imagined a decade ago.

As President Gordon B. Hinckley acknowledged to church members worldwide during a recent general conference, "I love you."

And they loved him back in a personal way at his viewing on Thursday. Church officials said 20,837 paid their respects at the Conference Center downtown. They came in cars and buses; on bikes and on TRAX; lugging backpacks and bags and briefcases; in wheelchairs and strollers; walking briskly and slowly; with canes and crutches and walkers and tiny children in tow.

They are old and young, able-bodied and feeble, missionaries with tags and many more without them. They came in suits and dresses as well as jeans and parkas, a mixture of people typical in any Utah suburb — most of them Latter-day Saints, but many of them believers of a different stripe.

As they filed quietly into the center he built to help spread what Mormons believe is God's message around the globe, the reverence and the love was palpable.

The daytime crowd was steady.

Once school and work were finished, the lines grew long. By 6:30 p.m., more than a thousand people were lined up outside the building, waiting to get inside. Others lined the corridors inside, quietly waiting their turn. An hour or more wasn't unusual.

Gathered in groups at the bottom of the massive building's escalators, they waited to move up to the third floor — anticipation, remembrance and a deep desire to pay their last respects all percolating inside. As they entered the Hall of the Prophets — with busts of President Hinckley's predecessors looking on — there were weak smiles, but no laughter; tears, but no tragedy; and goodbyes, but no fear that it was a farewell without a future.

Latter-day Saints believe they will see their beloved prophet, who died Sunday at the age of 97, in a better time and place.

But this day, it was enough to say farewell.

Some brought flowers, some brought cards. Most brought memories of times they were touched deep inside by a man they had never met but felt they knew personally.