Jimmy Carter’s state funeral starts Saturday. Here is what to know
ATLANTA– Six days of funeral celebrations for former President Jimmy Carter begin Saturday in Georgia he died on December 29 at the age of 100.
The early events reflect Carter’s climb up the political ladder, from the small town of Plains, Georgia, to decades on the world stage as a humanitarian and democracy advocate.
Here’s what you need to know about the first ceremonies and what happens next:
The proceedings, streamed apnews.com and the Associated Press YouTube channel, will begin Saturday at 10:15 a.m. EST, with the Carter family arriving at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus.
Former Secret Service agents who protected Carter will serve as pallbearers and walk alongside the hearse as it leaves campus en route to Plains.
James Earl Carter Jr. lived more than 80 of his 100 years in and around the city, where fewer than 700 people still live, not many more than when he was born on October 1, 1924. Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton also grew up in rural areas, but Carter stands out for his return to his hometown and his long post-presidency.
The motorcade will drive through downtown Plains, which covers just a few blocks, past the First Lady’s girls’ home Rosalynn Smith Carterwho died in November 2023 at the age of 96, and near where the couple operated the family’s peanut warehouses. The route also includes the old train depot that served as the headquarters of Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign in 1976 and the gas station once run by Carter’s younger brother Billy.
The column then passes the Methodist Church, where the Carters married in 1946and the house where they lived and died. The former president will be buried there next to Rosalynn.
The Carters built the one-story home, now surrounded by Secret Service fencing, before his first Senate campaign in 1962 and lived out their lives there, with the exception of four years in the Governor’s Mansion and another four years in the White House.
The military schedule calls for a stop at 10:50 a.m. in front of Carter’s family farm and childhood home in Archery, outside Plains, after passing the cemetery where the parents of former president James Earl Carter Sr. and Lillian Carter, are buried.
The farm is now part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. The National Park Service will ring the old farm bell 39 times in honor of the 39th president.
Carter was the first president to be born in a hospital. But the house had no electricity or running water when he was born, and he worked his father’s land during the Great Depression. Yet the Carters had relative privilege and status. Earl employed black farming families. The elder Carter also owned a general store in Plains and was a local civic and political leader. Lillian was a nurse and she gave birth to Rosalynn. The property still features a tennis court that Earl built for the family.
It was Earl’s death in 1953 that set Jimmy on course for the Oval Office. The younger Carters had left Plains after he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. But Jimmy left a promising career as a submarine officer and early participant in the Pentagon’s nuclear program to take over the family’s peanut business after his father’s death. Within ten years he was elected to the Georgia Senate.
From Archery, the motorcade heads north to Atlanta, stopping at 3 p.m. outside the Georgia Capitol, where he was a senator from 1963 to 1967 and governor from 1971 to 1975. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens will take a moment of silence. While former governors are honored with state funerals, presidents — even if they served as governor — are remembered with national rituals organized by the federal government.
The motorcade will then arrive at the Carter Presidential Center at 3:45 p.m., with a private service at 4 p.m. The campus includes the Carter Presidential Library and the Carter Center, founded by the former president and first lady in 1982.
From 7 p.m. Saturday to 6 a.m. Monday, Carter will lie in repose around the clock for the public to pay their respects.
The ceremony is expected to include some of The Carter Center’s 3,000 staff, whose work focuses on international diplomacy and mediation, monitoring elections and combating disease in the developing world, continuing to set a standard for what former presidents can achieve.
Jimmy Carter, who delivered it annual reports until 2019won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize in part for this post-presidential work. His grandson Jason Carter is now chairman of the board.
Carter’s remains will travel next to Washington, where he will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until his funeral at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral. All living presidents are invited, and Joe BidenA Carter allywill deliver a eulogy.
The Carter family will then return to bury their patriarch in Plains following a hometown funeral at 3:45 p.m. at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Carter, a devout evangelicaltaught Sunday school for decades.
Carter will be buried afterward in a private graveside service, in a plot visible from the porch of his home.
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