Mourners brave morning chill for tickets to President Hinckley's funeral

Randy Child spent most of Friday at the Salt Lake Temple and decided not to go home.

When Temple Square closed at 10 p.m., the Springville man opted to spend the night outside the north gates, wanting to make sure he was one of the 21,000 people to attend the funeral for President Gordon B. Hinckley today in the Conference Center.

"There's going to be a collective spirit in there of everyone who loves the prophet," Child said this morning. "That will be felt 21,000 strong."

Child, a lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was one of several hundred people who bundled up to brave the freezing cold weather late Friday night and early this morning to be a part of the memorial service.

President Hinckley, who guided the LDS Church for nearly 13 years, died Sunday.

According to the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City, the temperature downtown dipped to 18 degrees late Friday night. By 7 a.m. today, it had inched up to a still-frosty 22 degrees.

Child and those who joined him at the front of the line came prepared for the cold. He was layered in three pairs of pants, two coats and two sweaters. Marie Dalgleish, who joined Child in line shortly after 10 p.m. Friday, was decked out in two Peruvian hand-knit sweaters — "because they're warmer than any (American) clothes" — an Alpaca coat, hat, gloves and scarf, along with two full sweat suits, thermal underwear, six pairs of socks and three pairs of mittens.

Oh, and she topped off the ensemble with a sheet of plastic draped over her shoulders.

Dalgleish said her mother regularly took her to LDS General Conference, beginning when the Salt Lake City woman was an infant. Like Child, she wanted to personally experience President Hinckley's funeral in the Conference Center, joining the thousands of others who share her love and appreciation for the LDS Church leader.

"Gordon B. Hinckley's voice is something I've treasured all my life," she said. "I will greatly miss his eloquence."

Though the free tickets for the 11 a.m. funeral would not to be handed out until 9 a.m. and LDS Church officials advised the public not to begin lining up until 7 a.m., several hundred chose to ignore that counsel to make sure they didn't miss out on what some described as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

By 7 a.m., more than 1,000 people were waiting in a line that ran east from the north gate of Temple Square along North Temple and then south down the Main Street Plaza.

As it turned out, long waits in the cold weren't necessary to get into the funeral. Temple Square volunteers were still handing out tickets to anyone who wanted them as late as 10:30 a.m.