Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter will be honored Thursday with the pageantry of a funeral in the nation’s capital and second service in his tiny Georgia hometown that launched a Depression-era farm boy to the world stage.

Jimmy Carter was to be honored Thursday with a state funeral at Washington's National Cathedral, amid a groundswell of tributes honoring the 39th US president and the last from the so-called Greatest Generation.

Mourners from as far away as Maine and California waited in the freezing cold for the chance to say goodbye to former President Carter.