Jimmy Carter honoured at state funeral as US mourns former president

Jimmy Carter, a US president who served only one term but was widely admired for his humanitarian work after leaving the White House, was remembered during his state funeral on Thursday as a man who put honesty and kindness above partisan politics. Hundreds of mourners including all five living current and former US presidents filed into the Washington National Cathedral, where Carter’s flag-draped coffin was attended by a military honour guard. Fellow Democratic US President Joe Biden eulogised the 39th president, who died on December 29 at the age of 100, saying Carter’s life was “the story of a man who never let the tides of politics divert him from his mission to serve and shape the world”. “The man had character,” Biden said. “He showed us how character and faith start with ourselves and then flow to others.” Tens of thousands of Americans over the past two days filed through the Rotunda of the US Capitol to pay their respects to Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981 and was burdened by an ailing economy and the Iran hostage crisis. Many mourners hailed him as an example of decency and humility for today’s breed of highly partisan politicians. Republican US president-elect Donald Trump, who will return to office on January 20, sat a row behind Biden in the cathedral. Carter supported US Vice-President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. As Trump gears up to crack down on illegal immigration and stirs controversy with US friends or allies like Canada, Panama and Denmark, Biden underlined Carter’s virtues of compassion and respect. “Jimmy Carter’s friendship taught me … that strength of character is more than title or the power we hold. It’s the strength to understand that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect,” Biden said. “It’s about asking ourselves … What are the values that animate our spirit? Do we operate from fear or hope, ego or generosity? Do we show grace? Do we keep the faith when it’s most tested?” Before the service began, Trump shook hands with his former vice-president, Mike Pence, whom he had clashed with after Pence refused to go along with his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Trump sat next to former US president Barack Obama; the two men chatted amiably as introductory music played. To Obama’s right sat Laura and George W. Bush and Hillary and Bill Clinton. Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrived hand in hand and took seats in the first row next to Vice-President Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff. Carter was born a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia. He served as that state’s governor from 1971 to 1975. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work. One of his grandsons, Jason Carter, who serves is chair of the Carter Centre Board of Trustees, said the man he called “Paw-paw” and his grandmother Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023, remained humble and true to their values, choosing to remain in their modest home in Plains. “Yes, they spent four years in the governor’s mansion and four years in the White House but the other 92 years, they spent at home in Plains, Georgia,” Jason Carter said. Carter’s remains returned to Plains after the service. “I never perceived a difference between his public face and his private one. He was the same person no matter who he was with or where he was, and for me, that’s the definition of integrity. That honesty was matched by love,” Jason Carter added. Carter’s daughter, Amy, joined other family members at the funeral. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, US vice-president-elect J.D. Vance and Biden’s son Hunter were also among the mourners. Former US vice-presidents Al Gore and Pence sat side by side. Jimmy Carter won the White House by defeating Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 US election, in the years following Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal. The one-time political rivals went on to form a lasting friendship, and Carter eulogised Ford following his 2006 death. Ford’s son, Steven, read a eulogy on Thursday that his father had written for Carter. “Jimmy and I respected each other as adversaries even before we cherished one another as dear friends,” Ford said in his father’s words. “Jimmy knew my political vulnerabilities and he successfully pointed them out. Now I didn’t like it, but little could I know that the outcome of that 1976 election would bring about one of my deepest and most enduring friendships.” Mourners who earlier paid their respects to Carter at the US Capitol said they admired the late Southern Baptist who played a key role in the negotiation of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty as a gentle man, rather than a partisan combatant. “We’ve come so far from where Jimmy Carter was as a person and it’s kinda sad,” said Dorian DeHaan, 67, who travelled some 440km (275 miles) from Sugar Loaf, New York, to pay her respects. “I hope that this will be a reminder to people of what we need to get back to – that it’s not about the power, it’s about the people.” As she waited in the public viewing line outside the Capitol, DeHaan said her daughter married into the family of the president’s younger sister, Ruth, presenting the opportunity to meet the former president in Plains, Georgia. “But it’s a sad moment,” DeHaan said. “It’s the end of an era and I think we kind of have lost this real belief in humanity, in our presidency.”

Jimmy Carter honoured at state funeral as US mourns former president

In his eulogy, Biden praised the late US leader for rising above politics in his ‘mission to serve and shape the world’