In a funeral service that lasted more than three hours on Friday, Atlanta Police Officer Richard Halford was eulogized as a daring pilot, a courageous police officer and a loving father.

Hundreds of police officers from throughout Georgia and around the country turned out to pay their final respects in a show of solidarity and support for the 48-year old lawman’s family and friends.

Halford was one of two officers killed when an Atlanta Police OH-6 helicopter crashed during the search for a missing 9-year old boy last Saturday night. The boy was found unhurt.

A preliminary statement from the National Transportation Safety Board indicated the helicopter had struck a utility pole and became entangled in power lines before it crashed in flames.

Also killed in the crash was Flight Tactical Officer Shawn Smiley. His funeral is scheduled for Saturday.

Halford, a 26-year veteran police officer, was the most senior pilot on the force, with 16-years as pilot in command. Friday’s memorial was both soaring and solemn as Halford was eulogized by Mayor Kasim Reed, Police Chief George Turner, members of the City Council and fellow officers.

“He was a police officer’s police officer, a man’s man.” said Mayor Reed. “Each and every officer hurts because they know, but for the grace of God, this could be them.”

But perhaps the most heartfelt words came from those who knew Halford best.

“Our unit is devastated,” fellow Air Unit Sgt. David Tolleson told the standing-room-only crowd at Jackson Memorial Baptist Church in Northwest Atlanta. “I’ve asked myself many times, ‘How do we move on?’ I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know this. Richard Halford expects us not to stop.”

Then, his voice on the verge of breaking, Tolleson said goodbye. “Until I see you again, brother, full pitch! Fly on!”

Sgt. Archie Ezelle grew up with Halford in Columbus, Ga. At age 13, they were on the same football team together. Ezelle joked with his fellow mourners about Halford’s bravado.

“It seemed he started for the team at just about every position,” Ezelle remembered, chuckling along with the crowd. “Richard would give the illusion that he was going to take the snap from under center, he was going to pitch it back to himself playing halfback and he’d throw the ball downfield to himself, streaking down there for a touchdown.”

Ezelle and Halford wound up in the same class at the Atlanta Police Academy, neither knowing the other had enrolled. They roomed together in what Ezelle described as a bachelor pad. They met the women they would each marry around the same time and their bachelor pad became “a couples’ retreat.” They comforted each other when their marriages ended.

Suddenly, as if waking from a dream, it all seemed to catch up with Ezelle. His eyes filled with tears and his voice choked as he spoke of his dear friend in the past tense.

“If you knew him like his family knew and loved him,” he said in a quavering tone, “…he was bigger than life.”

There was a moment of silence as Ezelle’s fellow mourners – Halford’s friends and family – absorbed that realization. Then there was applause for Ezelle and for the memories he had invoked.

After the service the flag-draped casket holding Halford’s body was brought from the chapel to the parking lot outside, as hundreds of fellow law officers, many of them honor guards in their finest dress uniforms, offer a final salute. The casket was carefully placed on a caisson drawn by four matched horses. Atop them, riders from the North Carolina State Patrol solemnly pulled out from the church. As they did, they were followed by a single, untended horse wearing a saddle. In the stirrups of that saddle was a pair of polished boots turned backwards, the symbol of a fallen officer.

Halford was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in College Park. Many of the mourners left Jackson Memorial Baptist Church knowing that they would have to get up and do it all over again Saturday when they attend the funeral of Halford’s fellow Air Unit officer, Sean Smiley.