HAMPTON — The Winnacunnet High School Class of 1982 has been planning their 30th reunion for August. But at Wednesday's wake for classmate Michael Maloney, they were brought together months early.

Linda Tourtellot of North Hampton remembered Maloney from “slumber party days” with his sister, and him serving them cookies and milk.

“He loved life; he was a real fun guy,” Tourtellot said.

Kim Peirce recalled how Maloney was the first person to share a bus seat with her when she moved to North Hampton as a senior in high school.

“He was the first person to let me sit on the bus with him,” Kim Peirce said. “None of the girls liked me, so I would always sit with him, every morning.”

The two became fast friends, and later on her husband, Rye Police sergeant and part-time Greenland police officer Jeff Peirce, also became close friends with Maloney.

Maloney and his wife, Peg, would join the Peirces and other law enforcement families for an annual ski weekend in North Conway each year.

Peirce called those ski trips a happy, happy time.

“He was a great guy to be with. He couldn't golf, he couldn't fish, but he loved to,” she said.

She said inside the funeral home, televisions in each corner displayed a slide show of photos of Maloney and his family.

A basket of patches given to the family from the many police departments that came through earlier in the day stood near the casket.

► Photo Gallery: Chief Maloney wake

Mary Cahill remembered Maloney as a less than graceful football player at WHS who still tried, as well as a sweet, outgoing person with a great laugh and a great smile.

Cahill said when they graduated from high school in 1982, she did not envision Maloney becoming a police officer.

“He was too gentle to be a cop,” Cahill said.

After high school, Maloney joined the Army Reserves, and then became a police officer.

Town officials in Greenland said his personality was exactly what they were looking for in the small, quiet town of 3,500 residents when they hired Maloney 12 years ago.

The memories shared by those coming out of the public wake for Maloney on Wednesday evening at Remick & Gendron Funeral Home on Route 1 were plentiful.

So were the tears.

Many left the wake with red-rimmed eyes, men and women alike.

Hundreds of people lined up outside the funeral home to pay their respects to the fallen chief, who was shot and killed eight days before his retirement while assisting in a drug investigation last Thursday on Post Road.

Town officials, including administrator Karen Anderson, attended the wake together early on Wednesday evening.

“I think this is starting to make it actually real,” Anderson said. “It was hard to believe.”

She said the most beautiful scene walking in the door of the funeral home was a flower arrangement sent by New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft.

Player Vince Wilfork, Maloney's favorite player, and his wife, also sent an arrangement, which was placed near Maloney's beloved Wilfork jersey, which he would not let his wife wash, Anderson said.

She said Maloney was also wearing the Medal of Honor awarded to him posthumously by the New Hampshire Chiefs of Police Association.

Anderson said she has spent the last few days trying to maintain her composure to make sure all of the logistics were in place for Maloney's service today.

“The next couple of days are going to get very difficult,” she said.

Classmates said if Maloney had died of natural causes, they would probably be wearing shorts and Hawaiian shirts to his wake, instead of black.

“He'd probably say, ‘Enough already,'” Anderson said about the services. “But I don't know.”

Law enforcement officers came from as far north as Canada to participate, including four members from a Nova Scotia federal drug investigation team with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

“We read it in the paper in Nova Scotia and because we're doing drug investigations, we felt it important for us to be here,” RCMP Staff Sgt. Roddie Macdonald said.

Although the RCMP will not be on horseback, several mounted patrols will be stationed at Founder's Park near the entrance to Winnacunnet Road this morning, as a processional heads from Hampton Airfield to Winnacunnet High School for Maloney's memorial service at noon.

The public is invited to arrive beginning at 10 a.m. using the Winnacunnet Road access to the football field.