A long, freezing wait for a few hushed moments: a people’s farewell to Jimmy Carter

First came the public pomp, in dying hours of winter daylight: a horse-drawn caisson bearing the flag-draped casket, dignitaries with bowed heads, the snow-muffled echo of a military honor guard’s precision footsteps. But then, as night fell Tuesday on the nation’s capital, came the quieter tributes: ordinary people — first in the hundreds, swelling into the thousands — gathering in bitter cold outside the U.S. Capitol to pay their final respects to Jimmy Carter, the 39th American president, who died at 100 on Dec. 29. “After that,” Goodman said, “I always felt we were a very different country.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff pay their respects around the flag-draped casket of former President Carter. “I respected him so much as a human being.” While president, from 1977 to 1981, Carter was a self-described outsider in Washington, sometimes irked by the capital’s stuffy ways. “That’s really something to admire.” Carter’s family, conscious of his place in history, acceded to a full measure of public honors — including the elaborately choreographed arrival of his casket at the Capitol, and the state funeral set for Thursday at the National Cathedral, with diplomats and dignitaries and former presidents in attendance.