Thursday is a national day of mourning in the United States for the death of former US President Jimmy Carter, with the government shut down and top officials gathering at Washington’s majestic National Cathedral for a state funeral for the country’s 39th president.
Carter, who died last week at age 100 as the oldest former president in history, often disdained the political formalities of Washington governance, but his five living presidential successors — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama , Donald Trump and Joe Biden—will attend the funeral, and Biden will deliver a eulogy.
Mourners from the public have paid their last respects as Carter, in a flag-draped casket, lies in state at the U.S. Capitol since Tuesday.
After the funeral, Carter will fly back to his home state of southern Georgia, where he will be buried in a family plot next to Rosalynn Carter, his wife of 77 years, who died in late 2023.
Tributes to Carter have spanned a week, with many highlighting how he rose to power from humble beginnings as a peanut farmer to presiding as president from 1977 to 1981 during a tumultuous time as the United States sought to recover from the Watergate political scandal and his military defeat in the Vietnam War.
Carter, a Democrat, negotiated the Camp David Accords, a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, lost his re-election bid in 1980 to Republican Ronald Reagan in a landslide defeat, but later emerged into 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 global conflicts.
Declaring a national day of mourning, Biden called Carter “a man of character, courage and compassion.”
In addition to Biden, Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, and Stuart Eizenstat, a longtime friend and inside adviser to Carter in the White House, will deliver eulogies. The former president defeated Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election, but they became quick friends.
IN PHOTOS | State funeral of former President Jimmy Carter at the National Cathedral
A eulogy for Ford and another for Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, written before their own deaths, will be read by his sons, Steven Ford and Ted Mondale. Andrew Young, the civil rights leader who was Carter’s ambassador to the United Nations, will deliver a homily. Pop artists Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood will sing Imagine by John Lennon.
Public mourners paid tribute to Carter after viewing his casket at the Capitol. David Smith, a professor at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, 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’s causes.
“It had a huge impact on so many people,” he said. “Her work advancing minorities, appointing women to the judiciary, protecting our environment, defending human rights, all of those things are very important things to me.”
In the Capitol rotunda, where only about 50 Americans have been recognized with the honor of lying in state since 1852, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, at a service Tuesday night, described Carter as: “Navy veteran, peanut farmer, governor of Georgia. And president of the United States. Sunday school teacher. Nobel prize winner. Defender of peace and human rights. And, above all, a faithful servant of his creator and his neighbor.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, who on Capitol Hill on Monday certified Trump’s victory over her in the November election, praised Carter’s policies.
“He was the first president of the United States to have a comprehensive energy policy, which included the first federal support for clean energy,” he said Tuesday. “It also passed more than a dozen important laws related to environmental protection and more than doubled the size of America’s national parks.”
Carter died on December 29 after nearly two years in hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia. Since then, his final journey has taken his remains through the narrow roads of his humble hometown, along 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.
Rep. Alma Adams, D-North Carolina, said Carter was “a truly moral person.” “He taught Sunday school, so did I!” he said, smiling. “But I think (it’s) the fact that he cared about all the people. “He was a president of the people.”
South Carolina Republican Rep. Ralph Norman told VOA that while he did not align with Carter politically, “President Carter was a good man. President Carter was a man who served his country. He loved America. I didn’t agree with all of his policies, but you couldn’t (dis)agree with his patriotism, you couldn’t disagree. “He just loved his country.”
In late December, after receiving news of Carter’s death, Biden said: “We may never see someone like him again. “They know we can all do well to try to be a little more like Jimmy Carter.”
[Paris Huang, Mykhailo Komadovsky y Kim Lewis contribuyeron a este informe]
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