WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0Thursday is a national day of mourning in the United States for the passing of former President Jimmy Carter, with the government shut down as top officials gathered at the majestic Washington National Cathedral for a state funeral for the country\u2019s 39th president. Carter, who died last week at 100 as the oldest former president, often disdained the political formalities of Washington governance, but all five of his living presidential successors \u2014 Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden \u2014 attended the funeral, with Biden delivering a eulogy. Biden called Carter a devout Christian, \u201ca good and faithful servant of God and the American people.\u201d Biden said Carter led \u201ca good life of purpose and meaning, of character.\u201d \u201cTo make every minute of our life count,\u201d Biden said of Carter, \u201cthat is the definition of a good life.\u201d Mourners from the public have paid their final respects as Carter, in a flag-draped casket, has lain in state at the U.S. Capitol since Tuesday. After the funeral, Carter\u2019s remains were flown back to his southern home state of Georgia, where Carter\u2019s family and friends held a private service at Maranatha Baptist Church in the former president\u2019s hometown of Plains. Carter worshipped and taught Sunday school at the church for decades. Before the private service, the Navy conducted a flyover over Plains to honor Carter, who was a Navy veteran. During the service, Reverend Anthony Lowden, who was Carter\u2019s pastor, said that God had \u201ccalled the Sunday school teacher home\u201d when Carter died month, according to The Washington Post. The pastor described Carter as a \u201cman of faith, courage and conviction,\u201d according to The Post. After the private service, Carter was interred at the Carter residence in a family plot next to Rosalynn Carter, his wife of 77 years, who died in late 2023. The interment ceremony was private. The modest ranch house that the couple called home for years will eventually be turned into a museum, under National Park Service supervision. The tributes to Carter have lasted a week, with many noting how he rose to power from humble beginnings as a peanut farmer to preside in the White House from 1977 to 1981. During that tumultuous time, the U.S. was looking to recover from the Watergate political scandal and its military defeat in the Vietnam War. Carter, a Democrat, negotiated the Camp David Accords, a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and lost his 1980 reelection bid to Republican Ronald Reagan in a landslide defeat, but later emerged in a post-presidential life as a celebrated humanitarian. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his long efforts to negotiate peaceful settlements to world conflicts. In declaring the national day of mourning, Biden called Carter \u201ca man of character, courage and compassion.\u201d Aside from Biden, Jason Carter, the former president\u2019s grandson, and Stuart Eizenstat, a longtime friend and White House domestic adviser to Carter, delivered eulogies. The former president defeated Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election, but they became fast friends. A eulogy by Ford and one by Carter\u2019s vice president, Walter Mondale, written before their own deaths, were read by their sons, Steven Ford and Ted Mondale. President Ford, who died in 2006, called his relationship with Carter \u201cone of my deepest and most enduring friendships,\u201d proving \u201cthere is indeed life after the White House.\u201d Andrew Young, the civil rights leader who served as Carter\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations, delivered another tribute to Carter. Pop artists Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood sang John Lennon\u2019s \u201cImagine.\u201d Public mourners paid tribute to Carter after viewing his casket at the Capitol. David Smith, a professor at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, said the former president obviously impacted his career. He told VOA that he came to the Capitol to honor the man but also to honor Carter\u2019s causes. \u201cHe had such an impact on so many people,\u201d he said. \u201cHis work on advancing minorities, appointments of women to the judiciary, protecting our environment, advocating for human rights \u2014 all those things are very important things to me.\u201d In the Capitol rotunda, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, in a service late Tuesday, described Carter as: \u201cNavy veteran, peanut farmer, governor of Georgia. And president of the United States. Sunday school teacher. Nobel Prize winner. Advocate for peace and human rights. And first and foremost, a faithful servant of his creator and his fellow man.” Vice President Kamala Harris, who on Monday in the Capitol certified Trump\u2019s victory over her in the November election, extolled Carter\u2019s policies. “He was the first president of the United States to have a comprehensive energy policy, including providing some of the first federal support for clean energy,\u201d she said Tuesday. \u201cHe also passed over a dozen major pieces of legislation regarding environmental protection, and more than doubled the size of America’s national parks.” Carter died December 29 after nearly two years in hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia. Since then, his final journey has taken his remains over the skinny roads of his humble hometown, down the boulevards of Atlanta, the state capital, and through the skies to snowy Washington, for the state funeral. At the U.S. Capitol, lawmakers told VOA what Carter meant to them. Representative Alma Adams, a North Carolina Democrat, said Carter was \u201ca real moral person.\u201d \u201cHe taught Sunday school \u2014 I did, too!\u201d she said, smiling. \u201cBut I think [it\u2019s] the fact that he cared about all people. He was a people\u2019s president.\u201d Representative Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican, told VOA that while he did not align with Carter politically, \u201cPresident Carter was a good man. President Carter was a man who served his country. He loved America. I didn\u2019t agree with all of his policies, but you couldn\u2019t [dis]agree with his patriotism, you couldn\u2019t disagree. He just loved his country.\u201d In late December, after receiving news of Carter\u2019s death, Biden said, \u201cWe may never see his like again. You know we can all do well to try to be a little more like Jimmy Carter.\u201d Paris Huang, Mykhailo Komadovsky, Kim Lewis and Liam Scott contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0Thursday is a national day of mourning in the United States for the passing of former President Jimmy Carter, with the government shut down as top officials gathered at the majestic Washington National Cathedral for a state funeral for the country\u2019s 39th president. Carter, who died last week at 100 as the oldest former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":495,"featured_media":27325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/495"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}