It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to pay their respects to a president. They were not going to miss it, even if meant waking up in the middle of the night.

Members of Congress, the Supreme Court and other dignitaries will gather at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday for a lying-in-state ceremony for former President Jimmy Carter.

SPAN, former President Jimmy Carter gave a moment of levity on the future of The Carter Center upon his passing.

Perhaps Carter’s most revealing poem, “I Wanted to Share My Father’s World,” concerns the man who never got to see his namesake son’s achievements. He wrote that he despised Earl’s discipline, and swallowed hunger for “just a word of praise.”

Joe Biden is the consummate Washington insider. Jimmy Carter was anything but. Yet the 46th and 39th U.S. presidents had a decades-long friendship starting when Biden, as a young Delaware lawmaker, became the first sitting senator to endorse Carter’s outsider White House bid in 1976.

It’s the world’s most exclusive fraternity and, on Thursday, all five members of the so-called presidents club will gather to honor one of their own.

“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."

Vice President Harris, Congressional members, and guests gathered in the Capitol Rotunda on Tuesday as former president Carter's funeral proceedings continued.

Former President Jimmy Carter will lie here in repose under ceremonial guard 24 hours a day until 6 a.m. on Tuesday, so you can come at any time on Monday, day or night.

Hundreds of mourners gathered at the Carter Presidential Center on Monday night before President Jimmy Carter’s body is taken to Washington D.C.

A florist, a musician and a reverend are among the people working behind the scenes at Washington National Cathedral to prepare for Jimmy Carter’s service.