PLAINS, Ga. − The official state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter will be held Jan. 9 at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., the White House confirmed Monday.
The Carter Center released a statement saying the family has accepted an invitation from Congress for Carter, who died Sunday at 100, to lie in state at the Capitol rotunda. Funeral services will begin on Jan. 4 and end on Jan. 9, moving from Carter’s home state of Georgia to Washington, D.C.
President Joe Biden declared Jan. 9 a national day of mourning, ordered U.S. flags to fly at half-staff for 30 days and issued an executive order closing all executive departments and agencies of the federal government that day.
In Plains on Monday, two National Park Service rangers hung wreaths marked with black ribbon on the doors of the building where Carter went to high school. The school is now the Plains High School Visitor’s Center and is dedicated to teaching people about Carter.
Inside, Sandra Hicks, who lives down the road in Americus, Georgia, was touring the school with her grandsons. She wanted to teach the boys about Carter’s legacy “so they can learn more about where he actually came from, get a firsthand experience of what it looked like.” Hicks met the Carters while she was working at the photo center in the Walmart in Americus.
“He was never a stranger, even with Secret Service and what have you,” Hicks said.
One of her grandsons, Jaxson Hughes, 11, expressed his appreciation for having a president from near where he lives. He said Carter knew the struggle of the people in the area and was able to advocate for them.
Hicks mentioned Carter’s long history on humanitarian work, particularly his time with Habitat for Humanity, when she said he did much good in Americus. On a broader scale, Hicks said Carter also helped change the culture of Americus into one that cared for all the people of the town.
Dave and Nancy Shelbourne were also visiting the school Monday. The couple, from Indianapolis, was driving to Naples, Florida, for the winter. After Carter died, they stopped in Plains to learn about the president in honor of their grandson also named Carter.
“It’s just nice to know there are still good people in the world still trying to do things for humanity,” Dave Shelbourne said about the president.
Jimmy Carter dies:See reactions, plans for tributes after former president’s death
A message of peace and hope penned in 1977 by Carter is attached to spacecrafts currently floating in interstellar space, intended for an audience of alien life.
Carter included the message in two golden records attached to the Voyager spacecrafts, which are charting the edge of space outside the heliosphere created by the Sun. The records are a time capsule of life on Earth in 1977, designed to tell extraterrestrials about the people, cultures and nature on our planet.
“This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings,” Carter wrote in the message, which appears as an image on the record. “We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.”
Read more here.
− Riley Beggin
The Jimmy Carter Historic Site spans the town of Plains. The day after Carter died, people flocked to the site to pay their respects.
The site, which is overseen by National Park Service rangers, is made up of the Plains High School Visitor Center, Jimmy Carter’s Boyhood Farm and the Plains Train Depot.
“I think there is probably no president in American history who is associated with his hometown than Jimmy Carter is associated with Plains, Georgia,” said Mike Litterst, a spokesperson for the National Park Service.
Litterst described Carter as someone who everyone in town knew.
“For this little, tiny town, it’s a bitter-sweet day,” Litterst said.
The National Park Service rangers particularly remember the former president for his work to establish parks including adding millions of acres to national park land in Alaska in 1987, Litterst said. He added that Carter is often celebrated for his second act.
“Once he left office, he wasn’t interested in going on the speaking circuit and making money or playing golf,” Litterst said. Carter instead delved into humanitarian work, working in Plains and across the globe.
Congressional leadership announced Monday that Carter will lie in state at the Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C., from the afternoon of Jan. 7 to the morning of Jan. 9.
“The Capitol will be open to the public during designated times for those who wish to pay their respects to President Carter,” Congressional leadership wrote in a letter to Carter’s son, James Carter III, and the Carter Center.
The letter was signed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader-elect John Thune, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Funeral services for Carter will begin on Jan. 4., according to a news release from the National Capital Region Joint Task Force. The former president’s family along with his Secret Service Detail will travel with his remains from the Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus to his hometown of Plains.
Carter’s remains will then stop at Georgia’s State Capitol in Atlanta and then lie in repose at the Carter Presidential Center until Jan. 7. He will then lie in state at the U.S. Capitol until he is moved to the National Cathedral for a funeral service on Jan. 9.
− Riley Beggin
When Cheryl Glidden was in high school in about 1968, Carter spoke to her class for career day. This was early in his political career, before even his term as governor of Georgia. He stopped in Douglassville, about 35 minutes west of Atlanta.
That day, back when he still had red hair, Carter spoke to the class about truth and honesty. Glidden said she knew then that he was someone important.
She said he was a “kind of hometown hero so to speak.”
On Monday afternoon, Glidden visited the Plains High School Visitor’s Center with her family including her grandson who is named Carter after the former president.
Valery Yakubovich also visited the exhibits featuring Carter on Monday afternoon. Yakubovich grew up in the Soviet Union and had a vastly different experience learning about Carter growing up.
“It was really a different perspective until the Soviet Union fell,” Yakubovich said.
His views on Carter were colored by the propaganda pushed by the Soviet Union. That all changed when information became more freely available with Mikhail Gorbachev’s ascent to power.
Todd Sims, who was also at the high school Monday afternoon, hopes Carter will be remembered positively after he influenced people for generations.
“I’d like to think it’s a unifying moment and not a dividing moment,” Sims said.
Sims, who lives in Orlando, Florida, was born while Carter was president. “I kind of identify with him in that way,” Sims said.
– Alex Gladden
Trading on the New York Stock Exchange will be closed Jan. 9 in accordance with the national day of mourning following the death of Carter.
The Nasdaq said it would be closing trading of all U.S. equities and options that day as well. Bond markets will be open, but for reduced hours, closing early at 2 p.m. ET, according to a recommendation from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
“Jimmy Carter, with humble roots as a farmer and family man, devoted his life to public service and defending our freedom,” Lynn Martin, president of NYSE Group, said in a news release.
The New York Stock Exchange held a moment of silence Monday to honor Carter’s “life and legacy,” according to a post on X. The last time the New York Stock Exchange closed trading to honor the passing of a former president was in December 2018, when former President George H. W. Bush died.
− Fernando Cervantes Jr.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday ordered the Supreme Court building closed on Jan. 9 in recognition of the national day of mourning for Carter.
The court was not scheduled to be in session that day but will hear arguments the next day in TikTok’s challenge to a federal law requiring the popular, short-form video app to divest from its Chinese parent company by Jan. 19.
While Carter never had the chance to nominate a Supreme Court justice, he named Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to federal appeals courts, both of whom were later elevated to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton.
Ginsburg was one of 40 women Carter appointed to the federal bench. Until then, only eight women had been previously confirmed as federal judges, according to the Alliance for Justice.
“He envisioned a judiciary that upheld equal justice under the law by modeling equality among its ranks,” the Alliance’s Keith Thirion said in a statement.
− Maureen Groppe
President-elect Donald Trump had only kind words to say about Jimmy Carter upon his death on Sunday, calling the former president “a truly good man” who will be missed.
But Trump spoke of Carter in far less charitable terms when he was alive.
For years, Trump, a Republican, has mocked the one-term, Democratic commander in chief as the nation’s worst president. Just two months ago, on Carter’s 100th birthday, Trump suggested the terminally ill centenarian was happy because Joe Biden had finally replaced him as the worst president ever.
Carter often gave as good as he got. When late-night TV host Stephen Colbert asked him in 2018 if Americans wanted “kind of a jerk” as their leader, Carter didn’t miss a beat. “Apparently, from this recent election, yes,” he retorted.
Earlier this year, Carter suggested to his son, Chip Carter, that he wanted to live long enough to vote for Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, in November. Two weeks before election, Carter’s office confirmed that he had voted by mail. For Harris. Read more here.
− Michael Collins
Throughout the early afternoon Monday, families filtered into the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm.
Robin Melton and her family arrived from Columbus, Georgia. She said Carter makes her think of her own father.
“Well it’s hard when I think about Carter,” Melton said. “I think about my dad because they were almost in the same order, time. They believe definitely in prayer.”
She said she visited Plains the day after his death “to visit the places he lived and just to be a part of this.”
Her son Kylan Dawson said he remembers coming to the farm on holidays. The family used to bring Melton’s father.
Robin Collins traveled from Lumpkin, about 25 miles from Plains, to visit the site with her three grandsons. Collins noticed when she moved to the area about three years ago that Carter had positively impacted the community, bringing business to the small town.
Praise for Carter’s life and legacy was pouring in from around the world Monday. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres cited multiple international treaties spearheaded by Carter during his presidency, from 1977 through 1980, that “contributed significantly to international peace and security.” Guterres lauded Carter for his commitment to peace and human rights long after his presidential term through participation in conflict mediation, election monitoring and disease eradication.
“President Carter will be remembered for his solidarity with the vulnerable, his abiding grace and his unrelenting faith in the common good and our common humanity,” Guterres said.
Britain’s King Charles described Carter as a “committed public servant” who “devoted his life to promoting peace and human rights. His dedication and humility served as an inspiration to many, and I remember with great fondness his visit to the United Kingdom in 1977.”
Keir Starmer, the country’s Labor Party prime minister, said Carter “lived his values in the service of others to the very end.”
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said the decisions by Carter’s administration to acknowledge Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of “one China” and sever formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan “helped chart a new course” between the two nations.
The committee that awarded Carter the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 noted that Carter lived for 100 years and said his efforts to advance peace, democracy and human rights “will be remembered for another 100 years or more.”
Sisters Dawn Tarpley and Holly Cooper were taking a walk at the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm on Monday. The pair was visiting from Texas and had planned the trip before Carter’s death Sunday.
“Carter was an exceptional person and exceptional man,” Cooper said. The women were teenagers in the 1970s and remember Carter’s presidency firsthand.
“We’ve admired him for years,” Cooper said. “He was a man who stood up for his beliefs.”
Tarpley echoed her sister’s sentiments. “He just lived his life in an honorable way,” Tarpley said.
The faith of Jimmy Carter:A born-again Christian who practiced his own version of progressive evangelicalism
Carter referenced Jesus in an interview with Playboy magazine and it cost the Democratic presidential nominee more than he could fathom in the moment.
“I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times,” Carter said, a quote that Playboy published weeks before the 1976 general election.
The article included other remarks related to Carter’s faith − such as the importance of the separation of church and state, a conviction born of Carter’s Southern Baptist upbringing − but the adultery comment opened a rift with Carter’s kin in Christ. Read more here.
− Liam Adams, Carla Hinton
Remembering Carter:39th president and noted humanitarian has died
After attending Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, Carter attended the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and graduated in 1946 with a Bachelor of Science. Carter married Rosalynn Smith, whom he knew for most of his youth, on July 7, 1946, not long after his graduation. The two eventually had three sons – John William, James Earl III, Donnel Jeffrey – and a daughter, Amy Lynn.
Carter served as an active duty naval officer for seven years after his graduation, then eight more in the reserves. After his father died in 1953, Carter also took over the family farms and operated Carter’s Warehouse, a general-purpose seed and farm supply company in Plains. Carter’s political career began in the Georgia state Senate in 1963. Read more here.
− Jordan Mendoza
The biggest and most memorable moments:Looking back on Jimmy Carter’s 100 years of life
All four living former American presidents paid tribute on Sunday to the life and legacy of Carter, who died on Sunday at age 100. The condolences came from Donald Trump, the former and future president who is set to be sworn back into the White House next month, as well as Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who praised Carter for working “tirelessly for a better, fairer world.”
Carter was the longest living former commander in chief in U.S. history, and his relationships with several of his successors put him in a unique position as a role model for post-presidency life.
“Carter was quite ambitious on human rights, global public health, election integrity and promoting democracy around the world,” said Matthew Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University. “In some ways he was a more political ex-president than many of the other ex-presidents we’ve had.”
− Rebecca Morin, Phillip M. Bailey
‘A truly good man’:Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton pay tribute to Jimmy Carter
Carter was the only president alive who was in office during the 1970s after the death in 2006 of Gerald Ford and was the oldest living former president. Now, only four former presidents are alive, and only one was in office during the 20th century. The living presidents include Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Trump, at 78, is the oldest living former president but will soon hand off that mantle to Biden. In 2019, Carter questioned Trump’s legitimacy as president, saying, “he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.” Trump responded by calling Carter “a terrible president.” Here is a look at what the former presidents have done since leaving the White House.
− Jordan Mendoza
∙Jimmy Carter’s legacy: Growing up in Plains, Georgia shaped Jimmy Carter, just as he shaped his hometown
Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY; Reuters
