With more smiles for their memories than tears of mourning, the family and friends of William F. "Bill" Quinn, Hawai'i's first elected governor, gathered to say farewell during a funeral mass yesterday at Star of the Sea Church.

Quinn, who died Monday at age 87, was many things to the people who filled the pews: political leader, mentor, father figure. He was a man who played volleyball in the backyard with his children and a leader who walked the halls of Washington Place reading poetry. He dressed in Brooks Brothers suits and French cuffs and seemed never to take a bad photograph.

"He was no ordinary man," said former Honolulu City Councilman John Henry Felix, who had served on Quinn's staff when the governor's office was in 'Iolani Palace. "We celebrate the life of this remarkable man who led Hawai'i's transformation from territory to statehood status and set the stage for unprecedented educational and quality-of-life opportunities for her citizens."

The service drew about 300 people, including Gov. Linda Lingle, former Gov. Ben Cayetano, U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, former U.S. Rep. Pat Saiki and Hawai'i Intermediate Court of Appeals Chief Judge James Burns, whose father, John A. Burns, defeated Quinn in his 1962 bid for re-election.

One by one they greeted Quinn's widow and wife of 64 years, Nancy, who sat near a pikake- and maile-draped urn containing her husband's ashes remains. All around her were her children and grandchildren.

Born in Rochester, N.Y., in 1919, William Quinn was a decorated World War II veteran who moved to Honolulu after graduating from Harvard Law School in 1947. A Republican, Quinn got involved in the territory's drive for statehood over the next decade and was appointed territorial governor in 1957. After statehood in August 1959, Quinn was elected governor.

In his eulogy — one of three given — Felix grinned broadly as he told the audience about working for Quinn, "a stickler for detail" who made so many changes to speeches hammered out on Smith Corona typewriters that Felix said he wanted to cry.

From a dockworkers strike to a deadly tsunami in Hilo to the huge task of filling 500 appointed positions, Quinn drove a staff so taken with the governor that it would follow him anywhere, Felix said.

"His Irish charm and humor would sooth the wounds inflicted by his verbal salvos — and there were many," Felix said. "Bill had a way of holding two fingers together and he would use them as a gavel and he would say, 'John Henry, you need to do it like this.' It was remarkable that he never broke a finger."

In 1972, Quinn joined the law firm now known as Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel. That was where attorney David Reber met the former governor, he told the mourners during his eulogy.

Reber called his legal mentor "fearless," "brilliant" and "a skilled orator" whose booming voice often sent his secretary racing to close the office door.

But it was Quinn's "unpretentious" humility that struck Reber most. Reber said attorneys at the firm knew they needed to allow extra time when walking to court with Quinn because each trip became a small parade of greetings.

"The thing that was most remarkable was that the people whom he said hello to were from all walks of life," Reber said. "People he knew as grass-roots political supporters from campaigns of more than 25 years before and whom he had not seen in years. He remembered not only their names, but also things like their spouses, their aunties and uncles and where they worked."

Of all the tributes, though, the one that came from one of his seven children — Christopher, a Kona coffee farmer — moved the audience to cheers and applause.

Everyone in the spacious church knew of the elder Quinn's fondness for singing and of the way his tenor's voice would grace the Irish ballad "Danny Boy." So when Christopher, with a raspy voice not quite his father's and a guitar in his arms, told them "For Dad," many began to smile.

"It was really great," a beaming Christopher said after the service. "My heart was just wide open and I really felt my father's spirit. I really wanted to make it good for my father."

William Quinn was inurned yesterday afternoon in a private ceremony at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Punchbowl.

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.