Now the nation is getting its chance to say goodbye to the 39th president, a Renaissance man from Georgia who championed peace, human rights and the eradication of diseases long after he left the White House.
On Tuesday, thousands of mourners watched as a horse-drawn caisson carried former President Jimmy Carter’s casket down Pennsylvania and Constitution avenues to the U.S. Capitol. The procession was designed to mirror the inaugural parade in which Carter and his family walked on foot from the U.S. Capitol to the White House on Jan. 20, 1977.
Next, Carter’s remains were brought inside the U.S. Capitol rotunda and placed atop a platform that was built in 1865 to support Abraham Lincoln’s casket. Carter will lie in state in the rotunda through Thursday, accompanied by a special U.S. military honor guard.
“Today, we gather to celebrate the life of a man whose works will echo for generations to come — a man from Plains, Georgia, who grew up without electricity or running water and served as the 39th president of the United States of America and lived every day of his long life in service to the people,” Vice President Kamala Harris said during a ceremony at the Capitol attended by Carter’s family, federal lawmakers, U.S. Supreme Court justices and many others.
Carter, the only Georgian ever elected to the White House, entered home hospice care in Plains in February 2023 after a series of short hospital stays. He died last month after turning 100 in October.
In his 2020 biography of Carter, “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life,” Jonathan Alter underscored the former president’s striking versatility. Among other things, Alter wrote, Carter became a skilled farmer, naval officer, woodworker, Sunday school teacher, legislator, governor, president, diplomat, home builder, painter, professor, memoirist, poet and children’s book author.
“He was the first American president since Thomas Jefferson who could fairly claim to be a Renaissance man, or at least a world-class autodidact,” Alter wrote.
Were he alive today, Carter might have become mildly annoyed by how today’s events were thrown off schedule. A winter storm that blanketed the Washington area with snow delayed the funeral procession of the Nobel Peace Prize recipient by 90 minutes.
“One characteristic Mama sometimes deplored but that I inherited from my father — reinforced by my years in the Navy — was an obsession with punctuality,” Carter wrote in his 2001 memoir, “An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood.”
Carter added that his father “would always be well ahead of time to meet a train, attend a baseball game, or keep an appointment. It was inconceivable that his tardiness would keep anyone waiting, and he expected everyone around him to honor the same standards.”
Today’s events began in the morning at the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, where a solemn ceremony was held as the former president’s casket was carried into a hearse headed to Dobbins Air Reserve Base near Marietta. Teresa Gonzalez brought her 1-year-old daughter, Isabella, to the event and held aloft a sign declaring, “Thank You President Carter.” She didn’t want to say it would be his final time in Atlanta “because he’ll always live here.”
“His legacy lives here,” she said.
At Dobbins, Carter’s casket was placed aboard “Special Air Mission 39″ for the flight headed north. Gov. Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens were among dozens of mourners who silently observed the proceedings on the tarmac.
“Jimmy Carter was one of the greatest men to live and a great example for all service members,” said Samuel Olivos, a U.S. Navy seaman who was part of the funeral ceremonial team at Dobbins.
Tuesday’s journey to the nation’s capital was the latest leg in a nearly weeklong funeral procession that departed Saturday from southwest Georgia, stopped at Carter’s boyhood farm in Plains, and then traveled north by motorcade to Atlanta.
After his plane landed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, the naval veteran was brought to the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington. Located off Pennsylvania Avenue, the memorial features a statue of a lone sailor, towering masts with signal flags and bronze sculptures depicting Navy history.
As a boy growing up in South Georgia, Carter dreamed about becoming a naval officer.
“Although I might stand in our yard and admire the railroad engineers as they went by and tooted their steam whistles in answer to my waving hand, it was not their admirable job but the vague image of someday being on a ship that became my dream,” Carter wrote in his memoir.
After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, Carter became a submariner and rose to the rank of lieutenant. In 1953, Carter left the Navy after his father became terminally ill with cancer. He returned to Georgia to take over the family farm, paving the way for his political career. An advanced Seawolf-class submarine is named for Carter.
On Thursday morning, a funeral service will be held for Carter at Washington National Cathedral. President Joe Biden is expected to deliver a eulogy. Jason Carter, one of Jimmy Carter’s grandsons, is also expected to speak.
Afterward, Carter’s remains will be flown to Fort Moore near Columbus. Finally, his motorcade will pass through Plains before he is buried at his home next to his beloved wife of 77 years, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023. The Navy is scheduled to conduct a flyover in honor of Georgia’s Renaissance man.
— AJC staff writers Patricia Murphy and Alexis Stevens contributed to this report.
