In the words of Deputy Kunze’s daughter: ‘My dad was a hero. He protected everyone.’

In the few days since a fatally wounded Deputy Robert Kunze endured long enough to stop a dangerous convict on a crime spree, many people have called him a hero.

The word had special meaning Friday when the deputy’s young daughter, Alyssa, stepped up to the pulpit.

It was her father’s funeral service at Central Community Church. In front of the girl: hundreds of law enforcement officers in dress uniform. They came from across the state. They had filed in quietly and orderly and filled every seat in the massive church. And there was a U.S. senator, a state attorney general, various dignitaries and local officials and everyday people who knew the deputy from his work on his beat.

The church was silent. All eyes, some misty, were on her. She began in a soft and clear voice.

“My dad was a hero. He protected everyone. …”

People had been saying that for days. The pastor reminded those at the service: “Robert died so that others could live.”

But maybe the word will never have more impact than when his child said it — the child who lost her father.

In responding to a suspicious-character call this past Sunday afternoon, the 41-year-old deputy suffered a mortal wound, in his neck, according to a speaker at the service. He managed to shoot down his attacker before he collapsed. Sheriff Jeff Easter had said that two witnesses who had followed the suspicious person in their truck and were standing near the deputy — vulnerable on a rural blacktop — could have been the next victims if Deputy Kunze hadn’t killed him.

The irony, his friends and fellow deputies said, is that Robert Kunze didn’t take himself all that seriously.

He was a jokester with a wide-open, toothy grin — someone said it reminded them of Andy Griffith’s smile.

And he was an expert in accident reconstruction and a veteran patrolman who had always been a natural teacher for deputies trying to do their jobs better.

One of his best friends — a fellow deputy — recounted how Kunze played a joke on him, leaving a package with a woman’s thong panties. There was a whole, long, funny story behind it. Those at the service got to laugh.

As Easter came to the lectern, he reminded everyone that Friday was a day to celebrate Robert. So it was fitting to tell stories that made people smile.

The service wove an intimate narrative of anecdotes about Robert’s life from birth.

Everyone called him “Deputy Kunze,” “Kunze” or “Robert.” He hated to be called “Bobby.” Only a teasing best friend could get away with calling him that.

On the church big screens, pictures were displayed. Some captions: “Dancing with daughter.” “Found daddy’s socks.” “Being ornery as usual.” “Jack of all trades.” “Mr. Cool.”

Robert loved his wife, Kathleen. They had been married 17 years.

But most of the pictures were of him and his daughter, from all seasons of the year, for year after year.

One of the speakers summed it: “This little girl is his world.”

One speaker told how the deputy’s wife got the word Sunday. A sheriff’s supervisor called, said that Robert had been hurt, he’d been shot.

“Did Robert put you up to this?” she asked. He was a jokester.

“No, I’m serious,” the supervisor said.

The daughter tried to calm her mother.

At some point, Robert’s wife got the word: “Robert didn’t make it.”

She fell to the ground.

The medical team had done CPR for 45 minutes, trying to revive her husband.

“We couldn’t get him back,” the family was told.

Down the street from the church, hundreds if not thousands of people lined curbs along West Maple where the funeral procession would pass on the way to the cemetery, Resthaven Gardens of Memory. A hearse carried his coffin, draped with an American flag. The people lining the street dressed in blue to show their respect for a lawman. They waited quietly and patiently.

One woman held a handmade sign.

“RIP Deputy Kunze,” it said. “We will NEVER forget you.”

Members of the community started setting up the streets early in the morning. Trees along Kunze’s route had their trunks wrapped in blue masking tape. Hours before the funeral, people were setting flags and holding up signs along the procession route.

Tim Wooding, an Army veteran who owns property on the Maple route, was planning on going out of town on Friday. Instead, he stood in the drizzling rain alongside the road, after hanging American flags from a post outside his building, waiting to show his respect for law enforcement and Kunze’s family.