The Latest: Former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral begins soon
WASHINGTON — Jimmy Carter, the 39th U.S. president, will be honored Thursday with the pageantry of a state funeral in the nation’s capital, followed by a second service and funeral in his small Georgia hometown that brought a Depression-era farm boy to the world stage.
Here’s the latest:
Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who won the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War, suffered a humbling defeat after one tumultuous term and then redefined life after the White House as a global humanitarian, died on December 29, 2024 at 100 years old.
Businessman, naval officer, evangelist, politician, negotiator, author, woodworker, global citizen – Carter has charted a path that continues to challenge political assumptions and stands out among the 45 men who have reached the nation’s highest office. The 39th president harnessed his ambition with a keen intellect, deep religious faith and a prodigious work ethic. conducting diplomatic missions into his eighties And building houses for the poor well into his nineties.
“My faith demands – this is not optional – my faith demands that I do what I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can, with whatever I can try to make a difference, Carter once said.
Carter will be buried next to his wife, Rosalynn Carter, on a plot near the home they built before his first Senate campaign in 1962 and where they spent their lives, except for four years in the Georgia Governor’s Mansion and four years in the White House.
A long line of mourners gathered to pay their respects at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday evening.
“President Carter was the governor of the great state of Georgia when I was born,” said Lyn Leverett, one of those waiting in frigid weather Wednesday. “So he’s been with my, you know, my entire being. And I just want to pay my respects to a decent person.
“I’m originally from Nashua, New Hampshire, and when I was a kid, Jimmy Carter would sleep over at my house,” says Susan Prolman. “He had just won the Iowa caucuses and was in New Hampshire campaigning for New Hampshire’s first presidential primary. And I made him this little poster, and he kindly signed it.”
Kim James, also a Maryland resident, said she had yet to attend grade school when Carter was elected and sees him more as the white-haired former president who battled disease, advocated for democracy in the developing world and built homes for Habitat for Humanity in the US and abroad.
“He cared about other people,” James said, adding that political leaders today should work harder to copy that example. “That selflessness – it always stood out.”
“He set the bar very high for presidents on how to use voice and leadership for good,” said Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft. whose foundation funded Carter’s work to eradicate treatable diseases such as Guinea worm. Gates spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
“Whatever prestige and resources you have, ideally you can use them and gain an even broader societal perspective in your post-private sector career,” Gates said.
Bernice King, daughter of assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., compared the two Georgians to the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Both President Jimmy Carter and my father showed us what is possible when your faith compels you to live and lead from a place of love,” said King, who also plans to attend the service in Washington.
No matter how many times you sat in the modest sanctuary of Maranatha Baptist Church, there was always some wisdom to be gleaned from Carter’s measured, Bible-inspired words.
Carter taught his Sunday School class about twice a month to accommodate crowds that sometimes grew to more than 500 people. (On other Sundays, usually no more than a few dozen patrons and a handful of visitors attended services).
Here were the former Commander in Chief and the former First Lady, his wife of more than seventy years, simply Mr. Jimmy and Mrs. Rosalynn. And when it came to worshiping with them, everyone was welcome.
▶ Read more the former president’s Sunday school class
As Carter’s remains left Georgia on Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump arrived criticized the late former president during a press conference in Florida cede control of the Panama Canal to his home country.
Pressed on whether criticism of Carter was appropriate during the solemn funeral rites, Trump responded: “I liked him as a man. I disagreed with his policies. He thought giving away the Panama Canal was a good thing.”
“I didn’t want to bring up the Panama Canal because of Jimmy Carter’s death,” he added, even though he had first mentioned it unprompted.
“To all the young people in this country and to all who are searching for what it means to live a life full of purpose and meaning – the good life – study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith and humility,” said President Joe Biden said in a statement issued the day Carter died.
Biden spoke about Carter later that evening, calling it a “sad day” but one that “brings back an incredible amount of fond memories.”
“I’ve been with Jimmy Carter for over 50 years,” Biden said in his remarks.
He recalled that the former president was a comfort to him and his wife Jill when their son Beau died of cancer in 2015. The president noted that cancer was a common bond between their families, with Carter himself diagnosed with cancer later in life.
“Jimmy knew the ravages of the disease all too well,” said Biden, who planned a state funeral for Carter in Washington, DC, on January 9.
9 a.m. ET: Carter’s body leaves the Capitol where it currently lies in state
9:30 a.m.: His body arrives at the Washington National Cathedral
10am: The state funeral begins
11:15 a.m.: Carter’s body leaves for Joint Base Andrews in Maryland
11:45 am: Cater’s body flies back to Fort Moore, Georgia
2:00 PM: Upon arrival, a motorcade takes Carter’s body to Plains, Georgia
3:30 PM: Motorcade arrives at Maranatha Baptist Church for a private service
4:45 p.m.: Motorcade from church to Carter residence
5:20 p.m.: The Carter family hosts a final and private funeral at the Carter residence
All this pomp and circumstance will bring some irony for the Democrat who went from his family’s peanut warehouse to the governor’s mansion and eventually the White House. Carter won the presidency as the smiling Southerner and technocratic engineer who promised to change the way Washington worked — and eschewed many of those unwritten rules when he got there.
“Jimmy Carter was always an outsider” said biographer Jonathan Alter, explaining how Carter benefited from the fallout of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. “The country was longing for moral renewal and for Carter, as this genuinely religious figure, to come in and clean things up.”