Even as the 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter regarded himself as an outsider. On Thursday, he was honored with a funeral at the Washington National Cathedral, followed by a second service and burial in his little Georgia hometown.
Joshua Carter, the grandson of the former president, was the first to speak. He described how, after leaving the White House, Carter would frequently teach Sunday school.
According to Joshua, he constructed dwellings for those in need. In forgotten regions, he eradicated illnesses. Anywhere he saw an opportunity, he fought for peace. He cherished people.
Another grandchild, Jason Carter, expressed gratitude to his grandfather and his late wife, Rosalynn, who passed away in 2023.
According to Jason, the chair of the Carter Center, a global humanitarian organization established by the former president soon after he left office, “they were small-town people who never forgot who they were and where they were from no matter what happened in their lives.”
Just over a week before he leaves office, President Joe Biden, the first sitting senator to support Carter’s 1976 campaign, paid tribute to his fellow Democrat.
He peered far into the future, despite the fact that many people now believe he was from a bygone age, Biden added.
I’m missing him,” he continued. However, I find comfort in the fact that he is now again with his beloved Rosalynn.
President-elect Donald Trump paid his condolences in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday, joining all of Carter’s living predecessors in Washington for the funeral. They gathered in private before to the start of the ceremony, and the rare assembly of commanders in chief provided an uncommon moment of unity for the country in a hyperpartisan, factionalized era.
On Wednesday, January 8, 2025, Melania Trump and President-elect Donald Trump stop by the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter as he lies in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
In a rare encounter with his former vice president, Trump shook hands with Mike Pence as he made his way to his seat. Pence’s refusal to assist Trump in overturning his election loss to Biden four years prior caused a falling out between the two men.
Former President Barack Obama was sat next Donald Trump, and the two were observed conversing for a number of minutes. Kamala Harris, the vice president who lost to Trump in November, came in behind him but did not speak to him.
At the age of 100, Carter passed away on December 29. He lived so long that two of the eulogies were written by his predecessors, Gerald Ford, who served in the White House, and Walter Mondale, who was his vice president.
“By the luck of a short season, Jimmy Carter and I were rivals,” Ford’s son Steven recited his eulogy. However, friendship bound us together like no two presidents since John Adams and Thomas Jefferson for the many beautiful years that followed.
Although the presidents and their spouses grew close after Carter’s victory over Ford in 1976, Carter paid tribute to Ford at his own funeral.
On Wednesday, January 8, 2025, Melania Trump and President-elect Donald Trump stop by the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter as he lies in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (Pool/Andrew Harnik via AP)AP
Carter has been celebrated for his kindness and use of a remarkable work ethic to achieve more than just gain political power through days of official ceremonies and remembrances from prominent figures in politics, business, and the general public.
Military personnel carried Carter’s flag-draped casket down the east steps of the U.S. Capitol, where the former president had laid in state, to be taken to the cathedral Thursday morning, marking the start of the ceremony. A 21-gun salute was also observed.
Before Carter’s casket was carried inside the cathedral, the Armed Forces Chorus performed the song “Be Still My Soul.”
Andrew Young, 92, a former congressman, mayor of Atlanta, and ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter administration, also spoke to mourners. Carter lived longer than most of his inner circle and Cabinet, but he was particularly close to Young, a bond that united a Black Georgian and a white Georgian who had grown up throughout the Jim Crow era of segregation.
According to Young, Jimmy Carter was a blessing who contributed to the creation of the magnificent United States of America.
On Tuesday, January 7, 2025, in Washington, the Carter family attends a ceremony at the Capitol where the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter rests in state. At the age of 100, Carter passed away on December 29. (The New York Times/Kent Nishimura via AP, Pool)AP
Six days of national ceremonies will come to an end on Thursday. They started in Plains, Georgia, where Carter was born in 1924, spent the majority of his life, and passed away after receiving hospice care for 22 months. Carter, a former naval officer, engineer, and peanut farmer, has been lying in state since Tuesday, and ceremonies have continued in Washington and Atlanta.
As tributes centered as much on Carter’s humanitarian activities after leaving the White House as on his tenure as president from 1977 to 1981, long lines of mourners filed past his flag-draped casket in the rotunda, enduring several hours of cold weather.
A Boeing 747, which is used as Air Force One when the current president is on board, will transport Carter’s remains, his four children, and his extended family back to Georgia following the morning funeral in Washington.
His casket will rest beneath a wooden cross he fashioned in his own woodshop at Maranatha Baptist Church, the small building where the outspoken Baptist, who ran as a born-again Christian, taught Sunday school for decades after leaving the White House, will be remembered at an afternoon funeral.
Carter will be buried on family land in a plot next to Rosalynn, his wife of more than 77 years, after a final ride through his birthplace, past the former train depot that was the headquarters of his 1976 presidential campaign.
Speaking at the House of Lords in London on February 3, 2016, former President Jimmy Carter discusses the eradication of the Guinea worm.AP
Carter signed important laws and brokered a historic peace deal between Israel and Egypt. He won the presidency by promising excellent governance and open communication to a populace disenchanted with the Vietnam War and Watergate. However, Carter also oversaw global problems, like the Iran hostage crisis, in which Americans were detained in Tehran for nearly a year, as well as inflation and rising interest rates. In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan defeated Carter by a significant margin.
In his eulogy, former White House adviser Stu Eizenstat attempted to recast the Carter administration as more successful than the public at the time realized.
He pointed out that Carter established the Federal Emergency Management Agency, simplified energy research, and deregulated the US transportation sector. He underlined that although the American hostages in Iran were not released until after his defeat in 1980, Carter’s administration was able to arrange their freedom.
According to Eizenstat, he belongs in the foothills even though he isn’t a contender for Mount Rushmore.
FILE – On December 5, 2018, in Washington, former President George H.W. Bush’s state funeral was held at the National Cathedral. From left to right, President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, former President Barack Obama, former first lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Jimmy Carter, and former first lady Rosalynn Carter attend. (Alex Brandon, Pool, File/AP Photo)AP
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