Many in the overflow crowd at College Hill United Methodist Church wept audibly as Tiller's widow, willowy and elegant in a lace blouse and white linen skirt and clasping a white hankie, hit several impossibly high notes. Sunday, when Tiller was shot in the vestibule of their Lutheran church, she had been preparing to sing in the choir. Tiller's closed casket was draped in white cloth. Tiller, who was 67, is known to the public as one of the few providers of late-term abortions in the country and, indeed, the world. Although he was at the red-hot center of the struggle over legalized abortion for 35 years and the victim of some of its most extreme violence, his family and friends steered clear of that aspect of his life, striving instead to illustrate the kind of husband, father and friend he was. On the altar, a photograph of a smiling Tiller was displayed next to a large wreath with the words 'Trust Women,' a favorite Tiller saying. His love of axioms and aphorisms was a leit motif of the service, during which he was eulogized by a friend of 50 years and his four adult children, two of whom are physicians. To them, and to his 10 grandchildren, he was known as 'Papa.' 'Today, I will not go into any of the current political and media frenzy that we are all experiencing and living this moment, but I will say this: George's constant challenges over these last decades have been exemplary of his brave, courageous, passionate and dedicated attitude ... which the common man can't even comprehend,' said Larry Borcherding, his friend of 50 years and a fraternity brother of Tiller's at the University of Kansas. Borcherding recalled that Tiller attended college on a swimming scholarship, and for that, his friends nicknamed him 'Tuna.' Tiller loved skiing in Colorado and loved to travel, said Borcherding, who also spoke of Tiller's love for axioms. But Tiller found words to live by in other places, too, recalled his daughter Rebecca, who said her father once bought her a poster with sayings from 'Star Trek.' 'If you read these every day,' he had told her, 'you will be successful in life.' Among the 'Star Trexioms,' she said, was: 'Enemies are often invisible. Like Klingons, they can be cloaked.' The man who has been charged with first-degree murder in Tiller's death, Scott Roeder, attended some services at Tiller's Lutheran church before allegedly gunning him down Sunday, according to the Associated Press. The Wichita Police Department is leading the murder investigation, with help from the FBI, the Sedgwick County district attorney's office and the U.S. attorney. On Friday, the U.S. Justice Department announced it had opened a second, civil rights investigation to determine whether the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances act, known as FACE, was violated. FACE was passed in 1994 after a spate of violence against abortion doctors by extremists. Although security was tight at the 90-minute service, with uniformed and plainclothes law enforcement officers in abundance, the hundreds who had gathered to honor Tiller entered the sanctuary freely, and police reported no disruptive incidents. Warren Hern, one of the only other physicians in the country who provide late-term abortions, served as a pallbearer. He is under the protection of federal marshals. (Optional add end) The overflow crowd spilled out of the modern sanctuary and filled to capacity the church's gymnasium-sized multi-purpose room, where the service was broadcast on a huge screen. Lining the curb in front of the church, about 50 people -- mostly women -- from the Kansas National Organization for Women wore blue T-shirts that said 'Attitude is Everything,' one of Tiller's favorite slogans. Others handed out white and red buttons with the same slogan, which many mourners wore on their lapels. Fifty or more motorcycles were parked next to the church, owned by members of the Patriot Guard, war veterans who had come to honor Tiller, a Navy veteran and former flight surgeon. A dozen or so antiabortion protesters were held at bay -- required to stay two blocks away to conform to a Kansas state law outlawing protests within 150 feet of a funeral. They held signs -- among them 'God sent the shooter' -- and yelled antiabortion slogans. Reporters were not allowed into the sanctuary, where dozens of bouquets and wreaths flanked a photograph of a smiling Tiller, and afterward many who were approached declined to speak about the service. Marla Flentje, a Wichita human resources consultant who attended the service, said she served as an escort to Tiller's terrified patients during the so-called Summer of Mercy in 1991, when abortion foes flooded into Kansas to blockade his clinic, Women's Health Care Services. 'I thought the service today painted the portrait of the compassionate, caring, Christian man he was,' Flentje said. 'It exploded the caricature his detractors have tried to paint. He is the best of Wichita and the best of Kansas.' 