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Country music singer, sausage king and long, tall Texan turned proud Virginian Jimmy Dean will be laid to rest today at his Varina estate following a funeral this morning at Grove Avenue Baptist Church in Henrico County.

Family friends and performers from Dean’s entertainment career are expected to attend the service, which is open to the public.

More than 400 mourners braved sweltering heat and suspended celebration of Fathers Day to pay their respects to Dean, 81, and his family during a daylong visitation at Nelson Funeral Home on Laburnum Avenue.

“It’s been unbelievable, the outpouring of love and affection for my husband,” said Donna Meade Dean, Dean’s wife of more than 18 years.

Dean will be laid to rest tomorrow at his Varina estate, following a funeral at Grove Avenue Baptist Church in Henrico County.

The chance to say goodbye drew everybody from friends and employees of Dean’s sausage company to politicians and just plain folks whom Dean touched through his music or area philanthropy after he settled in the Richmond area 20 years ago.

Guests were led to a large visitation area ringed with elaborate flower arrangements sent by friends, business contacts and entertainers like Mel Tillis and the Oak Ridge Boys. A slide show played on video monitors, showing pictures of Dean as a young boy, then as an Air Force enlisted man and later with his family. Shots of Dean performing on television and in movies mingled with personal photos of high-profile friends like Elvis and President George H.W. Bush.

The body of the 6 foot 3 inch Dean was dressed in a light blue suit and fancy bolo tie. A white cowboy was hat perched on the corner of the open lid of a highly polished, all-mahogany casket.

Dean and George Allen, the former Virginia governor and former U.S. senator, were friends. Today, Allen and his family stopped by to express their condolences to Donna Dean and Dean’s daughter and two sons and their families.

“Jimmy Dean was just a truly wonderful friend who you could always count on — no matter what was going on he would always be there,” said Allen, who, as governor, worked with Dean to help clean up the James River.

“In my view, he was like a modern-day Will Rogers. . . . I think Virginia is very fortunate he decided to make Virginia his home.”

Richmond resident Karla Thommason, 35, knew Dean from his music and entertainment career and had met him once during a chance encounter in the supermarket 10 years ago. But she came to pay respect out of gratitude from Dean’s well-known generosity and support of public school students in Varina.

“He was just a really nice, for-real person,” she said. “He was just down-home.”