COLUMBIA, S.C. - It was a scene that could harken back decades.

Downtown Columbia seemed to stop during the noon hour as the horse-drawn caisson carrying the casket of former Sen. Strom Thurmond traveled from the Statehouse six blocks to First Baptist Church.

Thurmond's trip began on the south side of the Statehouse. Military pallbearers brought his casket down the steps, and Thurmond's family followed behind, clasping hands.

It was the first time they had been seen publicly since Thurmond died Thursday night in his hometown of Edgefield at age 100.

The casket was loaded on to the black caisson just a few hundred feet from the statue of Thurmond, gazing southward, on Statehouse grounds.

As the caisson continued up Sumter Street, officers blocked traffic. Only the muffled noises of distant cars and camera shutters snapping interrupted the sounds of horse hooves and an Army band playing an upbeat marching tune.

The crowd on each side of the street were two and three deep in some places.

There were regular folks, men in suits and elderly woman with their grandchildren. People pressed their faces against office windows or stopped after grabbing a bite to eat. First Baptist Church choir members stood outside in their blue robes, and others leaned out of parking garages or stopped working on a new office building to pay their respects from above.

Some bowed their heads, others put their hands on their hearts. They watched quietly, reverently, then shuffled away after the caisson, black riderless horse and the family's limousine passed.

Thurmond's older son, Strom Jr., sat in the front of the limo and acknowledged the crowd from time to time. Most of the rest of the family stoically rode along as the caisson made its way to Hampton Street.

Hannah Gougeon cried as the caisson passed by Tuesday.

She was on her lunch break and standing in a parking deck at Baptist Hospital, watching the front of First Baptist Church across the street.

Gougeon never met Thurmond in her 27 years in South Carolina, but she said she still felt grief and sadness for Thurmond's family and all of South Carolina.

"He was such a great man," she said, wiping her eyes. "Just such a great man."

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - After several days of mostly sunshine, the skies turned a leaden gray as Tuesday morning dawned.

A light rain fell on mourners as they waited to file past ex-Sen. Strom Thurmond's coffin at the Statehouse for a final time.

While the cloudy skies and drizzle kept temperatures in the unseasonably cool 70s, the humidity stayed so high men sweated through their dress shirts and women fanned themselves with paper.

About 10:45 a.m., as the caisson horses left their staging area, the rain picked up.

A steady downpour continued until shortly before the doors of the Statehouse opened and military pallbearers brought out Thurmond's casket.

By then, the shower was so light, Thurmond's family didn't carry umbrellas. The casket was covered with a protective tarp that allowed the U.S. flag draped over the coffin to shine through.

It drizzled all the way to the church and throughout the 1 p.m. funeral, but the rain tapered off about the time the procession headed for Edgefield.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Former Sen. Strom Thurmond lying in state became a history lesson for some families.

Chasta Vest took her 5-year-old son Caden from monument to monument Tuesday as she waited for some other family members to pay their respects at the Statehouse.

"He's at that age where he's starting to ask a lot of questions, and I've been meaning to bring him down here and show him some things.

One of the monuments the Vests stopped at honors the man who turned Thurmond on to politics.

"Pitchfork" Ben Tillman's statue sits on the other side of the Statehouse from Thurmond's statue.

Thurmond had said he decided to go into politics after seeing then-Gov. Tillman speak in Edgefield when Thurmond was about 10 years old.

Tillman was an Edgefield farmer known for his fiery rhetoric against blacks and for his poor brethren who worked the land.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Mourning fashion at the Statehouse ranged from suits and modest dresses to shorts and T-shirts Tuesday.

Anything with a Palmetto tree or American flag on it was especially popular. The trees showed up on ties, in black and white on shirts, on purses and tie tacks. Others wore shirts with U.S. flag designs.

Perhaps the most interesting fashion statement came from H.K. Edgerton of Asheville, N.C.

Edgerton wore a recreation of a Confederate soldier's uniform and carried a Confederate flag on a pole, but what stopped most people in their tracks was that Edgerton is black.

"Sen. (Strom) Thurmond was a great man and a great Southerner," said Edgerton, who recently marched from North Carolina to Texas to show his support for the Confederacy.

"There are a lot of people who had some very bad things to say about Sen. Thurmond after he died. I'm just here to show my respects and show that most of us were honored by him," Edgerton said.

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EDGEFIELD, S.C. (AP) - In town and along Interstate 20 between the funeral and the burial, people were standing on the overpasses and on the sides of the road to bid farewell to former Sen. Strom Thurmond.

Some people on the overpasses held flags, while some just pulled their cars over and parked on bridges to watch the procession, which stretched out more than a mile.

A few cars on both sides of the highway pulled over as the procession went by in the left lane; no one passed in the right-hand lane on the interstate.

In Edgefield, whole families gathered outside to wave at the hearse and following cars as they drove into town.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Strom Thurmond's casket passed plenty of things bearing the former senator's name on the journey from the Statehouse to its final resting place in Edgefield.

First was Thurmond's statue on the Statehouse grounds, about 100 feet from where his casket was loaded on to a caisson.

Thurmond's family was presented with a flag that flew atop the Statehouse by Don Fowler, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve's 360th Civil Affairs Brigade, nicknamed the Strom Thurmond Brigade.

Next, the casket and hearse passed just blocks from the Strom Thurmond Federal Building, one of the tallest buildings in Columbia.

A few miles up the road, the procession merged on to Interstate 20, known throughout the state as the Strom Thurmond Highway.

As the hearse came into Edgefield, it passed the Strom Thurmond National Guard Armory. If the procession had come into town the other way from Columbia, it would have passed Strom Thurmond High School.

Finally, the procession stopped at a second statue of Thurmond in Edgefield's town square.

And things continue to be named for Thurmond posthumously. The passenger vans shuttling people from a parking area to the Statehouse this week had signs on the side reading: "Strom Thurmond Shuttle."