Chicago pauses in memory of 'Sweetness'

The day after his death, many spoke more of Walter Payton the man than Walter Payton the running back.

"There aren't many players one can idolize as a child and still look up to them as an adult. Walter is one of the few," Sandy Fox of Chicago wrote in a message posted on the Chicago Bears' Web site.

Payton, the NFL's career rushing leader, died Monday of bile duct cancer that was discovered during treatment for a rare liver disease. He was 45.

With no obvious spot for fans to express condolences - Soldier Field is removed from downtown and Payton lived and worked outside the city - the sort of spontaneous memorials that often spring up after celebrity deaths were largely absent.

AP PHOTO Flags outside Soldier Field in Chicago flew at half-mast yesterday in memory of Walter Payton, the NFL's all-time leading rusher for the Chicago Bears, who died on Monday.

The Bears opened a gate at Soldier Field, and some fans dropped off bouquets and cards. More sent flowers to Payton's restaurant in suburban Aurora. At Mike Ditka's Restaurant, fans signed condolence cards and were encouraged to become organ donors. Just north of Soldier Field on Lake Shore Drive, Mike Liberles brought his Crane High School class to the Field Museum's exhibit on Bears' history.

"I never missed a game when Payton was playing," Liberles said.

His students, too young to remember Payton the running back, spoke of the man they knew through his charity work and the publicity about his illness.

"He broke records but he didn't let all this stuff get to his head. He didn't act like he was better than everybody like Michael Jordan does," said Marcus Smith, 15.

Payton brought glory back to a storied franchise, and to a city that had gone more than two decades without a sports championship when the Bears won the Super Bowl in 1986.

"You get disillusioned," said Mike Houlihan, a Chicago writer and lifelong Bears fan who remembers watching the team win the NFL championship when he was an eighth-grader in 1963.

"Somebody like Walter Payton comes along and you get reborn as a fan," he said.

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