WASHINGTON (AP) – 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 burial in his tiny Georgia hometown that launched a Depression-era farm boy to the world stage.
Carter’s funeral will be held inside the Washington National Cathedral. President Joe Biden, who will deliver the eulogy, has declared today a national day of mourning.
Carter will be buried in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, following a private funeral service at Maranatha Baptist Church, where the former president taught Sunday school.
A long line of mourners gathered to pay their respects at the U.S. Capitol Wednesday night.
“President Carter was the governor of the great state of Georgia when I was born,” said Lyn Leverett, among the people who waited in below-freezing weather Wednesday. “So he’s been around my, you know, my whole 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 child, Jimmy Carter slept at my house,” said Susan Prolman. “He had just won the Iowa caucuses and he was in New Hampshire campaigning for the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire presidential primary. And I created this little poster for him, and he very kindly signed it.”
Kim James, also a Maryland resident, said she had yet to start grade school when Carter was elected and thinks of him more as the white-haired former president who fought disease and advocated for democracy in the developing world and built homes for Habitat for Humanity in the U.S. and abroad.
“He cared about other people,” James said, adding that political leaders today should work harder to replicate that example. “That selflessness — it always stood out.”
“He set a very high bar for presidents, how you can use voice and leadership for causes,” said Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder whose foundation funded Carter’s work to eliminate treatable diseases like the Guinea worm. Gates spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
“Whatever prestige and resources you are lucky enough to have, ideally you can take those and take a even broader societal view in your post private sector career,” Gates said.
Bernice King, daughter of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., compared the two Georgians and Nobel Peace Prize winners.
“Both President Jimmy Carter and my father showed us what is possible when your faith compels you to live and lead from a love-centered place,” said King, who is also planning to attend the Washington service.
