Six days of commemoration of the funeral of former US president Jimmy Carter began on Saturday in Georgia, where he died on 29 Dec. at the age of one hundred.
The first episodes show Carter’s rise up the political ladder, from small-town Plains, Ga., to decades on the world stage as a philanthropist and representative of democracy.
Here’s what you need to know about the opening ceremonies and what happens next:
Honoring Carter’s rural roots in Georgia
The hearing was scheduled to begin at 10:15 a.m. ET Saturday when the Carter family arrived at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, a small town 17 miles east of the Plains.
Former Secret Service agents who protected Carter will serve as motorcades, walking alongside the hearse as it leaves campus on its way to town.
James Earl Carter Jr. he has lived for more than 80 of his 100 years in the Plains and surrounding areas, which still have less than 700 people, not much more than when he was born on Oct. 1, 1924. Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. and he grew up in rural areas, but Carter is notable for returning to his birthplace for his presidency.
The motorcycle procession will pass through downtown Plains, which spans just a few blocks, past the girlhood home of first lady Rosalynn Smith Carter, who died in November 2023 at the age of 96, near where the couple operated a peanut warehouse. The trail also includes an old railroad depot that served as Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign headquarters and a gas station once operated by Carter’s younger brother Billy.
The race will go to the Methodist church where the Carters were married in 1946, and the home where they lived and died. The former president will be buried there along with Rosalynn.
The Carters built the one-story house, now surrounded by a Secret Service fence, before his first campaign for the state Senate in 1962 and lived out their lives there except for four years in the Governor’s Mansion and another four in the White House.
A combination of privilege, hard work
The military-run program calls for a stop at 10:50 a.m. ET in front of Carter’s family farm and boyhood home in Archery, outside the Plains, after passing the cemetery where the former president’s parents – father James Earl Carter Sr., who accompanied Earl. , and mother Lillian Carter – were buried.
The farm is now part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. The National Park Service will toll the old farm bell 39 times in honor of the 39th president.
Carter was the first president to be born in a hospital. But the home had no electricity or running water when he was born, and he worked his father’s land during the Great Depression. Still, the Carters had limited privilege and status.
Earl Carter hired black farming families. The elder Carter also owned a store on the Plains and was a local civic and political leader. Lillian was a nurse and gave birth to Rosalynn. The property still includes the tennis court that Earl built for the family.
It was Earl’s death in 1953 that set Jimmy on the path to the Oval Office. The younger Carter had left the plains after graduating from the US Naval Academy. But Jimmy gave up a promising career as a submarine officer and early involvement in the Pentagon’s nuclear program to take over the family peanut business after his father’s death. Within ten years, he was elected to the Georgia state Senate.
He is laid to rest in Atlanta
From Archery, the motorcade will travel approximately 250 kilometers to Atlanta. It will stop at 3 pm ET at the Georgia Capitol, where he served as a state senator from 1963 to 1967 and governor from 1971 to 1975. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens will lead a moment of silence. While former governors are honored with private funerals, presidents — even if they served as governors — are remembered through national ceremonies run by the federal government.
Motorcades are then scheduled to arrive at the Carter Presidential Center at 3:45 p.m., with a private service at 4 p.m. The campus includes the Carter Library and The Carter Center, which was established by the former president and first lady in 1982.
From 7pm on Saturday to 6am on Monday, Carter will be laid to rest for the community to honor around the clock.
The event is expected to include The Carter Center’s 3,000 worldwide staff, whose work in international advocacy and mediation, election monitoring and disease control in developing countries continues to set the standard for what former presidents can achieve.
Jimmy Carter, who presented his annual reports until 2019, won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for part of this post-presidential work. His grandson Jason Carter is now chairman of the board.
Return to Washington
Next, Carter’s remains will travel to Washington, where they will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until his funeral at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral. All living presidents are invited, and Joe Biden, a Carter ally, will deliver the eulogy.
Finally, the Carter family will return to bury their patriarch in Plains after a hometown funeral at 3:45 pm at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Carter, a dedicated evangelist, taught Sunday school for decades.
Carter will be buried afterward in a private private service, in a prominent location on the front porch of his home.
Source link
