WASHINGTON: Jimmy Carter was celebrated Thursday for his personal humility and public service before, during and after his presidency in a funeral at Washington National Cathedral featuring the kind of pageantry the 39th US president typically eschewed. It was followed by an intimate hometown funeral near where he was born a century ago.
All of Carter’s living successors attended in Washington, with President Joe Biden, who was the first sitting senator to endorse his 1976 run for the White House, eulogizing his longtime friend. Biden and others took turns in the morning praising Carter’s record — which many historians have appraised more favorably since he lost his bid for a second term in 1980 — and extolling his character.
The dual ceremonies in Washington and Plains, Georgia, provided a moment of national comity in a notably partisan era and offered a striking portrait of a president who was once judged a political failure, only for his life ultimately to be recognized as having lasting national and global impact.
“He built houses for people who needed homes,” said Joshua Carter, a grandson who recalled how Carter regularly taught Sunday school in Plains after leaving the White House. “He eliminated diseases in forgotten places. He waged peace anywhere in the world, wherever he saw a chance. He loved people.”
Jason Carter, another grandson, wryly noted his grandparents’ frugality, such as washing and reusing Ziploc bags, and his grandfather’s struggles with his cellphone.
“They were small-town people who never forgot who they were and where they were from, no matter what happened in their lives,” said Jason, who chairs the Carter Center, a global humanitarian operation founded by Jimmy and his late wife, Rosalynn Carter.
At the national service, former President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump, who have mocked each other for years going back to Trump fanning conspiracy theories about Obama’s citizenship, sat next to each other and talked for several minutes, even sharing a laugh.
As Trump went to his seat, he shook hands with Mike Pence in a rare interaction with his former vice president. The two split over Pence’s refusal to help Trump overturn his election defeat to Biden four years ago. Karen Pence, the former second lady, did not rise from her chair when her husband did so to greet Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November, entered afterward and was not seen interacting with him. Former first lady Michelle Obama did not attend.
All politics were not left outside the cathedral, though. Biden, who leaves office in 11 days, repeated several times that “character” was Carter’s chief attribute. Biden said Carter taught him that “everyone should be treated with dignity and respect.”
“We have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor,” Biden said, also noting the importance of standing up to “abuse in power.” Those comments echoed Biden’s typical criticisms of Trump.
In Plains, Carter’s personal pastor, Tony Lowden, touched on the political as well, saying Carter was “still teaching us a lesson” with the timing of his death as a new Congress begins its work and Trump prepares for a second administration. Lowden, who did not name Trump or others, urged the nation to follow Carter’s example: “not self, but country.”
“Don’t let his legacy die. Don’t let this nation die,” Lowden said. “Let faith and hope be our guardrails.”
Carter died Dec. 29 at age 100, living so long that two of Thursday’s eulogies were written by people who died before him — his vice president, Walter Mondale, and his presidential predecessor, Gerald Ford.
“By fate of a brief season, Jimmy Carter and I were rivals,” Ford said in his eulogy, which was read by his son Steven. “But for the many wonderful years that followed, friendship bonded us as no two presidents since John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.”
Carter defeated Ford in 1976, but the presidents and their wives became close friends, and Carter eulogized Ford at his own funeral.
Days of formal ceremonies and remembrances from political leaders, business titans and rank-and-file citizens have honored Carter for his decency and using a prodigious work ethic to do more than obtain political power.
Proceedings began Thursday morning as military service members carried Carter’s flag-draped casket down the east steps of the US Capitol, where the former president had been lying in state since Tuesday. There was also a 21-gun salute.
At the cathedral, the Armed Forces Chorus sang the hymn “Be Still My Soul” before Carter’s casket was brought inside.
Mourners also heard from 92-year-old Andrew Young, a former Atlanta mayor, congressman and UN ambassador during the Carter administration. Carter outlived much of his Cabinet and inner circle but remained especially close to Young — a friendship that brought together a white Georgian and Black Georgian who grew up in the era of Jim Crow segregation.
“Jimmy Carter was a blessing that helped create a great United States of America,” Young said.
“Hail to the Chief” was performed by military bands multiple times as Carter’s casket arrived and departed various points. Carter once tried to stop the traditional standard from being played for him when he was president, seeing it as an unnecessary flourish.
Thursday concluded six days of national rites that began in Plains, where Carter, a former Naval officer, engineer and peanut farmer, was born in 1924, lived most of his life and died after 22 months in hospice care.
After the morning service, Carter’s remains, his four children and extended family returned to Georgia on a Boeing 747 that serves as Air Force One when the sitting president is aboard.
An outspoken Baptist who campaigned as a born-again Christian, Carter received his second service at Maranatha Baptist Church, the small edifice where he taught Sunday school for decades. His casket sat beneath a wooden cross he fashioned in his own woodshop.
Following a final ride through his hometown, past the old train depot that served as his 1976 campaign headquarters, Carter was interred on family land in a plot next to Rosalynn, who died in 2023.
Carter, who won the presidency promising good government and honest talk for an electorate disillusioned by the Vietnam War and Watergate, signed significant legislation and negotiated a landmark peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. But he also presided over inflation, rising interest rates and international crises — most notably the Iran hostage situation, in which Americans were held in Tehran for more than a year. Carter lost in a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Former White House aide Stu Eizenstat used his eulogy to reframe the Carter presidency as more successful than voters appreciated at the time.
He noted that Carter deregulated US transportation industries, streamlined energy research and created the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He emphasized that Carter’s administration secured the release of the hostages in Iran, though they were not freed until after Reagan took office.
“He may not be a candidate for Mount Rushmore,” Eizenstat said. “But he belongs in the foothills.”
