Perhaps nowhere were they shed more than at college football's most famous venue, Notre Dame Stadium.

The pain was etched on the faces of the few veterans in the usual sellout crowd of 80,000. Even dark sunglasses couldn't hide the tears of the sun-splashed students, stadium regulars and Michigan State alumni and fans.

The usual tributes to our nation brought an extra wave of emotion. Then Notre Dame President Rev. Edmund Malloy, C.S.C., stepped to the microphone and you could hear a stock price drop.

It was St. Patrick's Cathedral all over again. Strangers held hands. Many looked heavenward. All were seemingly raptly positioned in the palms of Father Malloy's uplifted hands.

But as special as that was, the halftime ceremony featured a campus first. Two bands. Six hundred musicians. Combining to play "America the Beautiful."

And you thought about that twisted wreck of steel, those thousands of lives, this country's long history of heroism...

Michigan State 17, Notre Dame 10, a little bit of controversy over an imagined Spartans violation of an unwritten stadium protocol that hinted both teams shouldn't take the field until after the pre-game ceremonies are over...these faded quickly.

Left was the singular thought that these are radically different times.

Fast-forward to Thursday night on Chicago's North Side. Baseball fans had seen the magnificent tributes New Yorkers had paid to their loved ones, heroes and total strangers at Shea Stadium and Yankee Stadium.

In city-after-city, people had offered their prayers and assistance. In Wrigley Field, there was little variation from that theme.

But if you remember back to the last time the United States' world role was challenged in 1991, allow yourself to harken back to the darkest days in Gulf War and remember one glowing moment.

Wayne Messmer, who regularly sings the National Anthem at Wrigley Field, was standing beneath the huge Barton Pipe Organ at the old Chicago Stadium and admitted, "I had a lump in my throat the size of a hockey puck."

One of the biggest theatre pipe organs in the world, played by Frank Pellico, was magic enough. But the 18,000 fans' thunderous emotional roller coaster ride and Messmer's mellifluous voice made it a true Chicago sports memory.

The pre-game ceremony had fans from eight to 80 standing for over 10 minutes without so much as a grunt of protest. The 40,000 Cubs fans knew the miracle season, so full of possibility 2 weeks before, had run out of dramatic moments in a miserable road trip that culminated with two losses in three in Pittsburgh.

The pre-game ceremonies -- a perfectly-played bagpipe version of "Amazing Grace," tributes to the cops and firemen, moments of silence, etc. were inspired.

But Messmer's renditions of "America the Beautiful" and the Anthem will echo through the Friendly Confines, Chicagoland and the nation for a long, long time.

The sign at Comiskey Park when the White Sox hosted the Yankees last week may have said it all: "Chicago loves New York."

Four words. A thousand pictures. A nation united.