RALEIGH, N.C. -- A powerful but polarizing and controversial figure is being remembered. Family and friends paid their respects to former Senator Jesse Helms Monday at Hayes Barton Baptist Church in Raleigh.

NBC17's Full Coverage: The Life & Death of Jesse Helms 

Helms died Friday inside a Raleigh nursing home at the age of 86. Gov. Mike Easley has ordered state flags to fly at half staff until sunset Tuesday in memory of Helms.

People who knew Helms personally and those who just admired him trickled into the church to say goodbye.

The man many called a true patriot lay in repose with an American flag draped over his coffin. Maureen Scott came to pay her respects.

"It was wonderful just to see that lovely portrait of him,” she said. “I’ve admired him for many, many years and he was a great American.”

It was harder than expected for Lynne Hunt, who is from the same county as Helms, to say her goodbyes.

"Yes, and I can't believe I’m getting emotional right now but it was,” Hunt said. "He's been a very selfless person and I don't think there are many selfless people left in this world who are willing to serve."

Helms will be remembered for his often controversial conservative views, but also for his work for North Carolina and in Bill Scott’s case, special causes.

"I have two handicapped sons and for many, many years he fought for our cause,” Scott said.

Garry Pennington didn’t agree with all of Helms’ politics, but came to the church anyway.

"I have mixed feelings about Senator Helms. I think he was overly conservative, but he did a lot for the State of North Carolina and just out of respect I came to pay my respects to his family and friends,” Pennington said.

Helms was a television commentator before being elected to the U.S. Senate. Steve Wilson remembers what his father told him one day about those comments.

"My father said, ‘son, always remember what this man says because he never tells you what he thinks, he only tells you what he believes,’” Wilson said.

Years passed and the Wilson family ended up volunteering during campaigns, and now Wilson remembers what Jesse Helms said.

"I remember him saying that he didn't go to Washington to please man he only went to Washington to please God,” Wilson said.

The funeral will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will be speaking as will some of Helms’ family members. Vice President Dick Cheney and several sitting senators are expected to attend.

Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said he would attend, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's office said she also was trying to make arrangements.

Senate leaders expected to send a delegation, including Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who took Helms' seat when he retired at the beginning of the decade. All possible votes in the Senate Tuesday were postponed until Wednesday, as was the Senate Republican Conference's weekly luncheon, because of the funeral.

Helms never lost a race for the Senate, but he never won one by much, either, a reflection of his divisive political profile in his native state.

He knew it, too.

"Well, there is no joy in Mudville tonight. The mighty ultraliberal establishment, and the liberal politicians and editors and commentators and columnists have struck out again," he said in 1990, after winning his fourth term.

He won the 1972 election after switching parties, and defeated then-Gov. Jim Hunt in an epic battle in 1984 in what was then the costliest Senate race on record.

He defeated former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990 and 1996 in racially tinged campaigns. In the first race, a Helms commercial showed a white fist crumbling up a job application, these words underneath: "You needed that job ... but they had to give it to a minority."

"The tension that he creates, the fear he creates in people, is how he's won campaigns," Gantt said several years later.

Helms also played a role in national GOP politics – supporting Ronald Reagan in 1976 in a presidential primary challenge to then-President Gerald R. Ford. Reagan's candidacy was near collapse when it came time for the North Carolina primary. Helms was in charge of the effort, and Reagan won a startling upset that resurrected his challenge.

During the 1990s, Helms clashed frequently with President Clinton, whom he deemed unqualified to be commander in chief. Even some Republicans cringed when Helms said Clinton was so unpopular he would need a bodyguard on North Carolina military bases. Helms said he hadn't meant it as a threat.

Asked to gauge Clinton's performance overall, Helms said in 1995: "He's a nice guy. He's very pleasant. But ... (as) Ronald Reagan used to say about another politician, `Deep down, he's shallow."'

Helms went out of his way to establish good relations with Madeleine Albright, Clinton's second secretary of state. But that didn't stop him from single-handedly blocking Clinton's appointment of William Weld - a Republican - as ambassador to Mexico.

Helms clashed with other Republicans over the years, including fellow Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana in 1987, after Democrats had won a Senate majority. Helms had promised in his 1984 campaign not to take the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee, but he invoked seniority over Lugar to claim the seat as the panel's ranking Republican.

He was unafraid of inconveniencing his fellow senators - sometimes all of them at once. "I did not come to Washington to win a popularity contest," he once said while holding the Senate in session with a filibuster that delayed the beginning of a Christmas break. And he once objected to a request by phoning in his dissent from home, where he was watching Senate proceedings on television.

Helms attended Wake Forest College in 1941 but never graduated and was in the Navy during World War II.

In many ways, Helms' values were forged in the small town where his father was police chief.

"I shall always remember the shady streets, the quiet Sundays, the cotton wagons, the Fourth of July parades, the New Year's Eve firecrackers. I shall never forget the stream of school kids marching uptown to place flowers on the Courthouse Square monument on Confederate Memorial Day," Helms wrote in a newspaper column in 1956.

He took an active role in North Carolina politics early on, working to elect a segregationist candidate, Willis Smith, to the Senate in 1950. He worked as Smith's top staff aide for a time, then returned to Raleigh as executive director of the state bankers association.

Helms became a member of the Raleigh city council in 1957 and got his first public platform for espousing his conservative views when he became a television editorialist for WRAL in Raleigh in 1960. He also wrote a column that at one time was carried in 200 newspapers. Helms also was city editor at The Raleigh Times.

Helms and his wife, Dorothy, had two daughters and a son. They adopted the boy in 1962 after the child, 9 years old and suffering from cerebral palsy, said in a newspaper article that he wanted parents.