Amid the melancholy strains of a soprano sax, baskets of flowers and the comforting words of the Rev. Otis Harden, an estimated 850 mourners bid a teary farewell to 17-year-old Mikael Nickolauson.

The service, held at the Eugene Christian Fellowship, brimmed with solace and encouragement for the grieving, praise for Thurston High School students and teachers, and loving stories about the young man in the flag-draped casket.

“If we come just in sorrow and weep the rest of our lives, we have failed,” said Harden, a retired Methodist pastor who is a longtime friend of the Nickolausons. “I think every one of you is hurting, hurting in a different way. But I learned long ago that this should be a moment of joy.

“Mikael is free. Mikael is free.”

Even in death, the generous, right-acting young man continued to help others. “If Mikael had not been standing where he was,” Harden said, “someone else would have died.”

During the 90-minute service for Mikael, the first of two students to die from a shooting rampage Thursday in the Thurston High cafeteria, Harden urged those gathered to draw upon the strength of their faith and reach out to one another in their pain. At his behest, the rows of mourners held hands, reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Later, neighbor hugged neighbor.

The memories of Mikael’s friends, family, teachers and the pastor added color to the black-and-white picture on the memorial service program so that even those who hadn’t known him left feeling as though they had.

Mikael, friends said, had a grin that spread across his whole face. He had a goofy way of knitting his eyebrows during class that made his teachers laugh.

He was a quirky young man. As a child, he delighted in taking apart electronics, once disassembling a ceiling light while riding in the back of a school bus.

His interest in electronics expanded into an affinity for computers. He didn’t identify with brand names, one teacher said, except Microsoft and IBM. He entered students’ grades into the computer for another teacher, Rene Cobb, at Hamlin Middle School. When he went on to Thurston, he taught Cobb how to do it herself.

“He taught me so much. And now he’s teaching the world a lot,” Cobb said. “May Mike’s untimely death have a greater purpose.”

Mikael drew energy by reaching out. He devoted himself to helping a friend pass her computer class — and made her erase the test answers she had written on her hand.

He satisfied that teen-age urge to escape by using, not harming, his mind. He constructed an imaginary world where he and his friends could go “to get away from reality and go crazy. And he created an arena where anything is possible,” a friend said.

He also had a grown-up side. He planned to marry Michelle Calhoun, also 17, after graduation. He joined the Oregon Army National Guard, became a private and hoped to one day work in computer programming.

Dozens of fellow guardsmen attended the service in full dress greens, some because they knew Mikael, others because they wanted to support his father, also a guardsman. Father and son were in the same unit, Alpha Company Battalion 2162.

“I learned things from him all the time,” said Josh Ryker, who had known Mikael since sixth grade and was one of five boys who tackled the gunman during the shooting. “But to me he’s not really dead. He’s still alive in my heart forever.”

Pastor Harding picked up on the theme of Mikael as a teacher and healer to inspire the young people in the crowd.

“Yesterday was terrible,” he said. “Today is terrible. But tomorrow is another day. There are brilliant students at Thurston High School. You’re our hope. You’re our dream, and you have to put yesterday behind you.”

Inspired by a banner hanging on the fence surrounding the high school, Harding held up Jesus Christ as an example for dealing with betrayal. His first words from the cross were “Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing,” Harden reminded the congregation.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., called to the microphone, shared news of the Nickolauson family’s desire to start a scholarship fund in their son’s memory.

Bill Wyatt, Gov. John Kitzhaber’s chief of staff, said, “The scars will obviously remain here for a long time, and all of us are thinking of you and hoping we learn from this.”

Learning and taking action is imperative, said Springfield mayor Bill Morrisette: It is God’s wish, he said, that we ultimately make some sense of Mikael’s death.

In a benediction, Harden stretched out his arm: “May we as a loving people move forward into tomorrow,” he said. “God be with us.”

The sun broke through the clouds for the first time in days as the hearse took Mikael to his final resting place. A fleet of 30 members of the Oregon Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Association escorted the entourage to Sunset Hills Memorial Gardens.

The ponytailed bikers in jeans and black leathe, and an Oregon National Guard honor guard in white gloves and dress blue uniforms paid respects side by side.

Two buglers blew taps. As the notes bounced through the hills, dozens of swallows banked and wheeled through the air.

Mikael is survived by his parents, Michael Nickolauson and Dawn Bloomfield Nickolauson; sisters, Erin and Bailey; brother, Kelsey; grandmothers, Dorothy Bloomfield of Torrance, Calif., and Ruth Nickolauson of Troutdale; and great-grandmothers, Geraldine Allen of Lincoln, Neb., and Elizabeth Emmons of Dobbins, Calif.

Mikael Erik Nickolauson