It seems only fitting that Jimmy Carter would return to Washington under blue skies and on a frigid January day to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.

He was sworn in as president during a similar cold snap. I remember because I was there.

As President Joe Biden, former presidents and other dignitaries prepare to honor Carter at a funeral service Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral, I’ve been reflecting on the only presidential inauguration I ever attended: Carter’s.

My sister Colleen and I attended the ceremony courtesy of my late uncle, Bill McQuillen, who helped engineer the former Georgia governor’s narrow win (about 35,000 votes out of 2.1 million cast) over President Gerald Ford in Wisconsin in the 1976 election. My uncle got two passes to the swearing-in and gave them to us.

I remember many things about that day, which came just months after my mother took a job with a congressional committee and moved my sister and me, both in intermediate school, from Buffalo, New York, to Northern Virginia.

I got up before dawn to deliver copies of The Washington Post to residents of our apartment complex. As I recall, a family friend helped out because I’d just gotten the paper route. A brisk winter wind sent some copies flying and we had to gather them up. The temperature hit 28 degrees at noon, so you can imagine how cold it was that morning.

Mom drove Colleen and me into Washington and up Independence Avenue, as Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” played on the radio. She dropped us off at the entrance to the East Front, where inaugurations were held until the swearing-in of Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, four years later.

I doubt you could drive straight up Independence Avenue on Inauguration Day today. It was a different time.

As my sister and I stepped out of our car, I remember being surrounded by taller people — adults — in winter coats. Colleen and I climbed a tree to a branch where we could see the proceedings. If you look at old video footage, you can see some attendees watching from up in the trees. It was the 1970s.

I don’t remember a lot about Carter’s inaugural address, but watching CBS News’ coverage of it on YouTube the other day, I was struck by its brevity — about 14 minutes — and his attempt to hit the reset button after the challenging years of Vietnam and Watergate.

He immediately thanked Ford for “all he has done to heal our land.” Ford acknowledged the compliment and the rivals shook hands.

The Georgia Democrat spoke of a “new beginning” and quoted from scripture.

While former President Donald Trump often rails against the so-called “Deep State,” Carter sought to restore faith in government, adding, “We know that if we despise our own government, we have no future.”

He also stressed the importance of human rights and ending the nuclear arms race.

When the Man from Plains was finished, he softly said, “Thank you very much,” and quickly turned away like a minister. Ford, with whom he would later become friends, stepped forward and shook his hand again.

After the speech, Colleen and I hoped to get a glimpse of the inaugural parade, but we didn’t have passes to the bleachers that lined the parade route. So we kept walking, hoping to find an opening, but saw very little.

We didn’t really know our way around the city, but we knew that a favorite pizza place of our dad’s, Nino’s, was located at 20th and M streets in Northwest Washington. So we headed there.

Shivering after a few hours out in the cold, we found a phone booth and called Mom to come pick us up. We ended up seeing Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s famous walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, designed to show he was a man of the people, on the late news.

A few months later, Uncle Bill would be sworn in as a presidential appointee in Washington and we would celebrate at Nino’s.

Attending high school in the D.C. area and with an uncle in the administration, Carter was a big part of my life growing up. I had a green Jimmy Carter for President poster on my bedroom wall, courtesy of my uncle; it showed the candidate in a work shirt, leaning on a fence. My sister and I went with our dad to see Willie Nelson perform at Merriweather Post Pavilion in September 1980, and who dropped in? His old pal Jimmy. They sang “Amazing Grace” together; a photo of a previous joint appearance there, in 1978, hangs at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta.

Carter had some remarkable achievements — from his forward-looking energy and environmental policies to the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. But these were ultimately overshadowed in voters’ minds by the economic troubles of the late 1970s — if you think the high price of eggs is a hardship, try waiting in line to fill up your gas tank — and the 444-day Iran hostage crisis. Carter lost to Reagan in a landslide.

Carter worked through the last night of his presidency to finalize a deal to bring all 52 hostages home. They were released shortly after Reagan took office.

Carter went on to have a widely praised post-presidency, from building homes for Habitat for Humanity and writing many books to working through the Carter Center to ensure free and fair elections and to virtually eliminate Guinea worm disease in affected countries. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to promote democracy and human rights.

This thread of decency that ran though Carter’s life can be seen in accounts of his days at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he provided moral support to Wesley Brown, who would became the first African American to graduate from the military college, but only after enduring years of abuse. Brown said Carter, with whom he ran cross-country, told him to “hang in there” and later put his arm around him in a show of support, according to Jonathan Alter’s excellent biography, “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life.”

When I lived in Atlanta, I would occasionally visit the Carter Library and Museum. It was fun to remember how the “Peanut Brigade,” made up of Carter’s supporters from Georgia, descended on primary states to help send a peanut farmer to the White House. I would think of my uncle, a Vietnam veteran who was looking for someone to believe in. He found it in Jimmy Carter.

I saw Carter speak once in Atlanta, when he addressed students at Georgia State University’s commencement in 2011. He shared the story of interviewing with Adm. Hyman Rickover, a stern figure known as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy,” and being asked if he’d always done his best while at the Naval Academy. Carter acknowledged that he hadn’t, prompting Rickover to sharply ask, “Why not?” The question stayed with Carter throughout his life.

For all the accolades that Carter is receiving in death, he wasn’t always treated so well. Democratic presidential candidates tended to shun him, his fellow members of the “Presidents’ Club” bristled at his criticism, and he remained a favorite target of some Republicans, even in hospice care.

I, however, always liked and admired Jimmy Carter. He spoke his mind and lived a life of purpose. He listened to Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. When told in 2015 that melanoma had spread to his brain, Carter, then 90, said he was at ease with the prospect of dying, then beat cancer and lived another decade. Later, even after a fall, he turned up at a Habitat for Humanity project, ready to work. And he hung on to be there for his beloved Rosalynn, his wife of 77 years, who passed away in November 2023.

It didn’t surprise me that Carter lived to see a big party thrown in his honor on his 99th birthday, emerged from hospice care to attend his wife’s funeral services, made it to the century mark on Oct. 1 and managed to cast his vote for Democrat Kamala Harris for president. “Never count Jimmy Carter out,” Gerald Rafshoon, a former Carter spokesman, observed once. “When he sets a goal, he gets there.“

I was glad that I was there for a small piece of history — and glad that I got to watch Carter’s extraordinary journey unfold, as president and citizen, in the decades since that cold, sunny January day.