Jeremiah Castille was in the cafeteria when the world stopped.

Across campus, Mike McQueen was working out at the football complex when athletics trainer Jim Goostree delivered the news. There were no tears in the weight room, he recalls 40 years later, simply because nobody could believe Bear Bryant could die.

They just cleaned up and walked back to Bryant Hall where Castille sat in the same stunned disbelief.

This was Jan. 26, 1983. Bryant’s fatal heart attack suffered just four weeks and two days after his final game set in motion a grief-wrecked chain of events for Castille, McQueen and six of their teammates that will forever be their legacy.

Just two days later, they’d stand at the top step of First United Methodist Church in Tuscaloosa, those eight selected as pallbearers would reach down and grab the rail of a flower-draped casket and walk onto the pages of Alabama history books.

Now, 40 years later, Castille and McQueen spoke with AL.com about their vivid memories of that sunny yet solemn day. The shared experience came with different perspectives but with the same conclusion.

Castille was an All-American defensive back from Columbus, Georgia while McQueen was an offensive lineman from Enterprise who’d never even been to a funeral to that point in his life. He didn’t even own a suit while Castille had previously carried the casket of a former high school basketball teammate.

Emotions spanned the spectrum from pure grief to anxiety while coming to grips with the void left by Bryant who was 69 at the time of his passing.

Now in their 60s, the college upperclassmen knew their coach was beloved but what they saw Jan. 28, 1983 was startling. They felt it that day from the church in downtown Tuscaloosa to the streets and interstates lined with mourners all the way to Birmingham’s Elmwood Cemetery.

“People standing on the side of the road crying tears,” Castille says. “We were on the bus riding and I thought they didn’t even know him like we knew him. Can you imagine you live your life in such a powerful way that it impacts people that don’t personally know you?”

And it was those moments when Castille and McQueen could fully appreciate the gravity of their part in this historic moment.

Their lives would be forever linked to that late January day in Tuscaloosa.

***

Castille was in his dorm room when the call came from assistant coach Jack Rutledge. Still trying to process the reality of Bryant’s mortality, the soft-spoken defensive back was stunned he was picked among the eight pallbearers.

Him? Really?

“When you think about all the people they could have chosen, just the people he coached,” Castille said. “I reckon they went with the guys who played that last season. My mind went to the Lee Roy Jordans, the Joe Namaths, the Kenny Stablers, the Woodrow Lowes.”

McQueen was even further off the beaten path as an offensive lineman. Both, however, were members of a small bible study group that Bryant knew met regularly. That, Castille figures, was the link that tied him, McQueen and the others — Jerrill Sprinkle, Tommy Wilcox, Paul Fields, Walter Lewis, Eddie Lowe and Darryl White.

McQueen couldn’t remember the exact moment he learned of his selection but more about his response. Looking in his closet, khakis and a sportscoat were as formal as it got.

“Well,” he told his girlfriend, now wife Pam, “that’s not going to do.”

So they raced to a men’s shop downtown that opened just for him to get measured. When the owner learned of his role, they expedited the tailoring for the suit that would be seen on newspaper front pages across the nation a few days later.

For Castille, his deep sadness was inescapable. The son of a World War II veteran, Castille worked for his father back home and Bryant became almost an extension of his family in Tuscaloosa. The sorrow is still heard in his voice four decades later when he talks about the incredible impact this icon had on his life.

A longtime chaplain for the Alabama football program, pastor and motivational speaker, Castille said the two people who influenced him the most to join the ministry were his mother and Bryant.

Just a month before walking his casket to the hearse, Castille famously stood up in the Liberty Bowl pregame locker room. This was to be Bryant’s final game after already announcing his retirement and there was immense pressure to send him out with a win. Castille wasn’t the most vocal guy in the program but something compelled him to stand up and deliver a message of inspiration. Alabama beat Illinois that frigid night in Memphis, 21-15 and Castille had three interceptions.

On stage for the trophy presentation, Castille recalls one of his two “Kodak moments” with Bryant. A man was congratulating the coach for his many accomplishments when Bryant turned to his star defensive back.

Castille still drops his voice low to quote what Bryant said next.

“‘My career was great because of young men like this,’” Castille says with a hint of sandpaper on the vocal cords. “Then he put his arm around my shoulder. That moment was just etched. … there are so many words in that but just putting his arms around me said so much. It was like a father approving what his son’s done. I’m proud of you, son.”

Just 30 days later, he was placing his right hand on the rail of Bryant’s coffin on his final walk. That’s a lot to stomach for a 22-year-old.

“My heart,” Castille says now, “was so sad.”

***

The funeral service itself was brief and the church sanctuary was small. Three different downtown churches hosted mourners with the audio piped into nearby First Baptist Church and First Presbyterian Church. Those invited to the brief service inside First United Methodist Church included the 1982 football team, coaches, and Governor George Wallace. President Ronald Regan reportedly planned to fly down to Tuscaloosa but a scheduling conflict forced him to send former NFL coach George Allen as his representative.

Outside, the masses gathered. Thousands.

And it was in that surreal moment, standing atop the church steps about to carry the casket to the hearse, that McQueen got it. A military kid who moved around as a child, he wasn’t necessarily from the mold of a Crimson Tide lifer, at least not from birth. His family didn’t move to the state until his junior year of high school. Of course, being recruited to Alabama by Bryant was an incredible honor that changed his life, but McQueen didn’t grow up dreaming of Iron Bowls.

So as he stood there on live television, he was stunned by a few sensory details.

“The silence,” he says. “When you walk out there and see all those people not making a sound, that surprised me. Standing at the top of the steps looking down — there are so many pictures I’ve seen through the years of us coming down the steps, but I remember the view from the top looking at all the people and realizing the enormity of this. I knew it was going to be a big deal but I think it was the first time it really struck me how big of a deal this really was.”

And then it was time for the exit.

Those thousands of silent mourners watched as the eight walked the casket down those church steps. For whatever reason, McQueen was the first of the four on the right side of the formation.

“Don’t stumble,” McQueen told himself. “Don’t drop it. Don’t mess up.”

Again, this was the first funeral he’d even seen and now he was walking the casket of his legendary coach down steps without time to rehearse or practice. He said he felt more pressure at that moment than in any football game he’d played. And there was one complication that spiked any performance anxiety.

Bryant’s casket was draped in roses in an elaborate display.

“From the time we picked it up at the top of the stairs and started to carry it down, a pin from one of those things that stuck in my hand,” McQueen says. “And there was no way in the word — I mean it wasn’t like I was suffering some laceration — but it was a pin that was poking me. But I dared not take a chance and regrip it and drop one corner of it on worldwide television. Don’t mess up. Don’t mess up. Don’t mess up.”

They didn’t and the blood from being impaled by a floral pin quickly dried.

Castille didn’t remember anxiety from that moment.

“No,” he said. “Just heartbroken.”

But, like McQueen, the sheer number of people he saw standing vigil outside the church struck Castille.

“As a player,” he says, “you’re in a bubble. For four years up there, you go to practice and go to class and go play. That’s it. Your life is very confined. It’s nothing like today with social media with kids knowing what’s going on in public.”

So it was that moment at the church and what came next on the procession to the grave that struck Castille and McQueen the most. They were on the six buses with their teammates as the five-mile-long snake of vehicles followed the hearse. They went past Bryant-Denny Stadium one final time before making their way to Birmingham.

Every overpass was choked with mourners. Cars on both sides of Interstate 59 stopped out of respect as everyone in the vicinity wanted one final look, one last goodbye. The second of Castille’s two Kodak memories came on that drive to the cemetery.

“We pull up to this traffic light,” Castille remembers, “and there’s a young woman who is crying. To me, that tells you the greatness of his impact on the people of Alabama. And that, in my mind, good Lord, I want to live my life and impact people to that extent. I want to be of service to my fellow man that people will miss — they didn’t have to know me — but they’d miss my presence because of how I lived.”

Castille said he didn’t get a moment to share with Bryant’s widow, Mary Harmon Bryant, that day. McQueen did.

His service that day was for her and he vividly remembers watching her grieve the loss of her husband of 47 years. She was there before he was the mythical Bear with six national championships. For the enormity of the moment, Paul Bryant was a husband and father who died before he could enjoy his retirement.

“I wanted to do this well but there we were standing by the casket watch

ing this incredibly strong but tiny woman bear the weight of all this. It just made me feel overwhelmingly protective toward her. I didn’t get the enormity of it but my heart was broken for her. Hers was a love story of sacrifice and giving up a big part of her life so that her husband could have that influence.”

His moment was brief.

“I took her hand and told her I love her,” McQueen said, “And we love her.”

And then it was over and the emotions shifted once again.

“When it was over, it was somewhat of that same lost feeling,” McQueen said. “Man, I haven’t thought about this in a long time. Once you speak to her and people break up and go their different ways, it’s like ‘Well, that’s it.’”

The players loaded back on the buses and drove back to Tuscaloosa.

“And when you ride back, the signs are gone, the traffic is flowing and people aren’t standing there,” he said. “And you realize, even with the enormity of life, the Bible says it’s like a vapor. It’s there and then it’s gone. I think that really struck me. … it was very sobering to have experienced that.”

In the months after her husband’s death Mary Harmon would have former players over to her house.

“It was meaningful to treat her like a mother or a grandmother,” McQueen said. “She loved us. She really, really cared about us, not because she got the attention or anything out of it but she just really loved us all.”

Mary Harmon Bryant died the following year and is buried beside her husband deep in the vast Elmwood cemetery.

***

Forty years later, Castille still thinks about that nameless woman he saw crying her eyes out on the streets of Tuscaloosa. He also hears the unmistakable voice of his mentor telling the locker room the world is full of givers and takers and to always be a giver.

He went on to the NFL where he famously forced the fumble in the 1987 AFC title game that sent his Denver Broncos to the Super Bowl instead of the Cleveland Browns. He was an All-American at Alabama, finishing with 16 interceptions and was named to the All-Century team.

But, to this day, when he’s introduced at speaking engagements, his bio is always topped by the fact he was a pallbearer for Bear Bryant’s funeral.

“I tell people that’s the greatest honor I’ve received,” Castille said. “I’m in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, it’s been a great honor. But really, to receive the call that I was going to be a pallbearer for Coach Bryant … man.”

The gravity of that fact still strikes him all these years down the road.

“Whew,” he says, gathering his thoughts. “That is … hmm.”

The same is true for McQueen, who like Castille, is a pastor. After football, he went on to medical school and is a doctor practicing back home in Enterprise.

“I’m 61 years old,” he says, “and a week doesn’t go by where someone doesn’t say ‘Yeah, and he was one of Coach Bryant’s pallbearers.’”

Forty years later, McQueen knows his role Jan. 28, 1983 will likely be the first line in his future obituary.

“In the South and in that particular world, there’s not much higher honor anyone could be given,” he says. “I don’t think if I’d won the Heisman Trophy it would mean as much that I was chosen to be one of the pallbearers.”

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.