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The casket of Michael Jackson stands at the public memorial service at Staples Center yesterday in Los Angeles.
Kim Ashley (center) plays with her son Cory's hair during an outdoor viewing in Harlem of the service.
The funeral procession for Michael Jackson heads to the Staples Center after a memorial service for friends and family at Forest Lawn Mortuary yesterday in Los Angeles.
Comforting Michael Jackson's children onstage during the memorial service are his sisters, Janet (left) and La Toya. The event was held yesterday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. |
Hollie Soutter spent Monday morning serving eggs Benedict, pancakes and coffee at the Inn at Kelly's Ford in Remington. By evening, the 20-year-old Culpeper resident and waitress was in the back of a cab in Los Angeles.
She and her cousin, Jessica Davis, 19, found out earlier in the day that they'd won tickets to the Michael Jackson memorial service.
About 1.6 million people had entered to win.
Among those who saluted Jackson were Motown music mogul Berry Gordy Jr., Brooke Shields, the Rev. Al Sharpton and basketball greats Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant. Jennifer Hudson sang Jack- son's hit "Will You Be There?" and John Mayer played guitar on a whisper-light rendition of "Human Nature."
"This is a moment that I wished I didn't live to see," Stevie Wonder said before his performance. Usher broke down in tears after singing "Gone Too Soon."
Although the event was billed as a celebration, some speakers took the occasion to come to the defense of Jackson, whose life was marked as much by criticism and scorn as scintillating talent.
Millions of fans around the world gathered at odd hours to watch the ceremony, which was broadcast by the major TV networks and cable channels from Tokyo to Paris to New York and streamed everywhere online in one of the biggest celebrity send-offs ever seen.
Soutter, a nursing student at Germanna Community College, didn't get in to the Staples Center, where the speakers, celebrities and coffin were.
But she was among a few thousand other fans across the street watching on three big screens inside the Nokia Theatre.
"Even though our applause--nobody could hear it--there were a couple of standing ovations," she said.
After the main arena ceremony, Jackson's family came over to the Nokia Theatre to speak to his fans there.
"Words can't describe how amazing it is to even be here," she said by telephone from inside the theater.
Before yesterday, Soutter said she couldn't relate to the emotional outbursts she'd seen on TV about Elvis Presley.
"I never understood how you could get that way over a celebrity," she said.
She does now.
During the memorial, "people were crying. People were laughing," she said. "It was a roller coaster."
"It was really crazy. I didn't think I would get emotional, but I found myself with tears in my eyes a couple of times."
Singers Hudson and Smokey Robinson, she said, moved her the most at the memorial.
Soutter flies home this morning, but planned to take in as much of Los Angeles as she could yesterday afternoon and evening.
Her plans included a walk down Hollywood Boulevard and a trip to the beach.
She promised her dad, Fred, she'd get a picture of the Pacific Ocean, something he has never seen.
And by late afternoon, she still hadn't been able to sign a memorial wall set up for fans to share messages to their hero.
Given the chance, she planned to write:
"We came 3,000 miles just to see you and say thanks for your music."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
