“Jimmy Carter was always an outsider ,” said biographer Jonathan Alter, explaining how Carter capitalized on the fallout of the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon. “The country was thirsting for moral renewal and for Carter, as this genuinely religious figure, to come in and clean things up."

Funeral events across the country will honor Jimmy Carter's life and career in public service, from his boyhood farm in rural Georgia to Washington and back.