Jimmy Carter, the former U.S. president who struggled with a bad economy and a hostage crisis but went on to a long and admired post-White House career, will be honored at a state funeral in Washington on Thursday.

Jimmy Carter, who considered himself an outsider even as he sat in the Oval Office as the 39th US president, will be honoured on Thursday with the pageantry of a funeral at Washington National Cathedral before a second service and burial in his tiny Georgia hometown.

Jimmy Carter liked to eat at the Pit Stop in Thomaston, Ga. That was where the future president met a boy who would grow up to be a state trooper.