WASHINGTON — All events on Tuesday related to memorial services for President Jimmy Carter have been delayed 90 minutes to account for a winter storm in Washington that blanketed the area with nearly a foot of snow.
The biggest event of the day is a 4:30 p.m. service at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda where Vice President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Leader John Thune are scheduled to deliver brief eulogies and lay wreaths near Carter’s casket.
The former president will lie in state from 7 p.m. to midnight as scheduled, allowing members of the public to pass by his flag-draped remains and pay their respects. Public viewing will resume Wednesday at 7 a.m. and end Thursday at 7 a.m.
According to the new schedule, a departure ceremony will be held at the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta at 11 a.m. Carter’s remains will be transported to Dobbins Air Reserve Base and then flown to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. From there, the motorcade will head to the U.S. Navy Memorial, where Carter’s casket will be transferred from a hearse to a horse-drawn caisson.
Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 and was chosen to serve in the Navy’s developing nuclear submarine program. He left the military in 1953 after his father became terminally ill with cancer and returned to Georgia to take over the family farm, a life pivot that paved the way for his political career.
The route from the Navy Memorial to the Capitol was designed to replicate a portion of Carter’s 1977 inaugural parade where he and his wife, Rosalynn, became the first couple to walk the route instead of being driven in a car. Members of the Carter family plan to walk behind the caisson for the roughly mile-long journey.
Members of the public are allowed to line up along the route of the procession, which is scheduled to begin at 3:45 p.m.
Upon arrival at the U.S. Capitol, the late president’s remains will be carried inside. His casket will be placed on top of the same catafalque that was built in 1865 after the death of Abraham Lincoln.
Members of Georgia’s congressional delegation will join their colleagues from both chambers of Congress at the 4:30 p.m. service. Invited guests also include Supreme Court justices, and current military and White House leaders, as well as those who served under Carter.
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