RALEIGH - Jerry Musselwhite wanted to make sure he saw Jesse Helms one last time. So Musselwhite left his home in Lumberton at 6 a.m. Monday for Raleigh, where the former U.S. senator was to lie in repose after dying July 4.

The doors at Hayes Barton Baptist Church weren't open when Musselwhite arrived, so he sat on a low wall for a breakfast of Mountain Dew and a cigarette.

"I just wanted to come to show how I respected the man," Musselwhite, 60, said as he waited. "He might have stepped on some toes, but when Jesse Helms spoke, it carried the truth."

Helms' funeral today, also at Hayes Barton Baptist Church, is expected to draw prominent political figures from North Carolina and elsewhere. Monday was largely for folks like Musselwhite, who showed up in jeans and an N.C. State University baseball cap.

Musselwhite had left his home early in case the crowd was large. It wasn't -- Helms has been out of the public eye for years, after all -- and only about 35 people were waiting when the doors opened. Jeans seemed to outnumber neckties early in the day as a slow but steady trickle of people filed past the flag-covered coffin, which was flanked by two N.C. Highway Patrol troopers in dress uniform and an oil painting of Helms seated at a desk with a sheaf of papers in his hand.

The pace picked up later in the day, when Helms' family welcomed visitors, and more formal dress became the norm. By the end of the evening, hundreds of people had paid their respects.

Outside, those who had come to say goodbye to Helms ran a gantlet of journalists. Supporting Helms can still be controversial. At one point, a church official asked television reporters to refrain from filming walkways. At least one visitor who didn't want people to know that he or she had come had complained.

Many who did talk to journalists said they knew Helms or at least had met him, and offered stories about his good manners or something he had done for them. Most offered some variation on the same theme: You knew where Helms stood because he had the courage to say exactly what he thought.

Many also hastened to add the caveat that they didn't agree with Helms on everything, such as his steadfast opposition to the civil rights and gay rights movements.

A surprising supporter

Lilly Rose DeVee, 62, said she knew Helms for years when she worked in the art department at WRAL-TV, where Helms read an editorial after the newscast from 1960 to 1972. DeVee described herself as a liberal Democrat and said she disagreed with Helms about social issues.

But she said she admired Helms and learned a lesson from him.

"Jesse Helms taught me something important, and that is to be yourself, to say what you mean, mean what you say and stand behind it," she said.

Helms might not be thrilled with where that lesson took her: When she was with the television station, DeVee's name was John D. Hardee. She described herself as transgender, and then was a homosexual man, she said.

Helms probably suspected her sexual preference, she said, and likely knew that another man in the art department was also gay. She said Helms always treated them with the same courtesy and respect he showed everyone else there, though, sometimes thanking them for their work and once giving her theater tickets. In turn, she was happy to vote for him, beginning when he first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1972, because she believed he would do a great job, particularly on fiscal issues.

It's hard to say whether he slowed progress on civil and gay rights, she said, because his most extreme statements might have actually provoked a stronger response from those who disagreed.

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