WASHINGTON – Jimmy Carter, a U.S. president who struggled with a bad economy and a hostage crisis but was widely admired in his post-White House career, was remembered during his state funeral on Thursday as a man who put honesty and kindness above politics.
Hundreds of mourners including all five living current and former U.S. presidents packed the Washington National Cathedral. As the somber ceremony began and a bitterly cold wind blew, Carter’s flag-draped coffin was carried up the stone steps of the cathedral by a military honor guard after its trip from the Capitol, where his body had lain in state for two days.
Fellow Democratic President Joe Biden was due to eulogize the 39th president, who died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100. Republican President-elect Donald Trump was among the luminaries at the funeral, before Carter’s body is returned to Georgia, where Carter was raised as a peanut farmer.
The funeral began as Joshua Carter remembered his grandfather as being inspired by his Christian faith. A Sunday school teacher for most of his life, he announced major life events, including the death of a grandson and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, in the classes he taught, Carter said.
“My grandfather spent the entire time I’ve known him helping those in need. He built houses for people who needed homes. He eliminated diseases in forgotten places, he waged peace anywhere in the world, wherever he saw a chance,” Joshua Carter said. “He loved people.”
Carter won the White House by defeating Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 U.S. election, in the years following Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal. The one-time political rivals went on to form a lasting friendship, and Carter eulogized Ford following his 2006 death.
Ford’s son, Steven, read a eulogy on Thursday that has father had written for Carter, who served from 1977 to 1981 and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work.
“Jimmy and I respected each other as adversaries even before we cherished one another as dear friends,” Ford said in his father’s words. “Jimmy knew my political vulnerabilities and he successfully pointed them out. Now I didn’t like it, but little could I know that the outcome of that 1976 election would bring about one of my deepest and most enduring friendships.”
Before the ceremony began, Trump entered the cathedral with his wife, Melania, Trump shook hands with his former vice president, Mike Pence, who he had clashed with after Pence refused to go along with his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Trump, who will return to office on Jan. 20, sat next to former President Barack Obama, with whom he chatted as introductory music played. To Obama’s right were Laura and George W. Bush and Hillary and Bill Clinton.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden walked hand in hand and took seats in the first row next to Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Vice President-elect JD Vance and Biden’s son Hunter were also among the mourners. Former vice presidents Al Gore and Pence sat side by side.
Tens of thousands of Americans over the past two days filed through the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol to pay their respects to Carter.
Some said they admired the late Southern Baptist who played a key role in the negotiation of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty as a gentle man, rather than a partisan combatant.
“We’ve come so far from where Jimmy Carter was as a person and it’s kinda sad,” said Dorian DeHaan, 67, who traveled some 275 miles (440 km) from Sugar Loaf, New York, to pay her respects. “I hope that this will be a reminder to people of what we need to get back to — that it’s not about the power, it’s about the people.”
As she waited in the public viewing line outside the Capitol, DeHaan said her daughter married into the family of the president’s younger sister, Ruth, presenting the opportunity to meet the former president in Plains, Georgia.
“But it’s a sad moment,” DeHaan said. “It’s the end of an era and I think we kind of have lost this real belief in humanity, in our presidency.”
Following the state funeral, Carter’s remains will be returned to his native Plains where he lived in his 44 post-White House years and made the base of operations for his diplomatic work and charitable efforts including Habitat for Humanity.
Carter lived longer than any other U.S. president and had been in hospice care for nearly two years before his death. His last public appearance was at wife Rosalynn’s funeral in November 2023, where he used a wheelchair and appeared frail.
In August, his grandson Jason Carter said Carter was looking forward to casting a ballot for Democrat Harris in the Nov. 5 election, which she lost to Trump.
Biden, during his long career in the U.S. Senate, was the first member of that chamber to endorse Carter for president. (Reuters)
