Remembering Jimmy Carter: Former U.S. President Honored in State Funeral at Washington National Cathedral

WASHINGTON – Jimmy Carter, a U.S. president who struggled with a bad economy and a hostage crisis but was widely admired in his post-White House career, was remembered during his state funeral on Thursday as a man who put honesty and kindness above politics.

Hundreds of mourners including all five living current and former U.S. presidents packed the Washington National Cathedral. As the somber ceremony began and a bitterly cold wind blew, Carter’s flag-draped coffin was carried up the stone steps of the cathedral by a military honor guard after its trip from the Capitol, where his body had lain in state for two days.

Fellow Democratic President Joe Biden was due to eulogize the 39th president, who died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100. Republican President-elect Donald Trump was among the luminaries at the funeral, before Carter’s body is returned to Georgia, where Carter was raised as a peanut farmer.

The funeral began as Joshua Carter remembered his grandfather as being inspired by his Christian faith. A Sunday school teacher for most of his life, he announced major life events, including the death of a grandson and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, in the classes he taught, Carter said.

“My grandfather spent the entire time I’ve known him helping those in need. He built houses for people who needed homes. He eliminated diseases in forgotten places, he waged peace anywhere in the world, wherever he saw a chance,” Joshua Carter said. “He loved people.”

Carter won the White House by defeating Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 U.S. election, in the years following Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal. The one-time political rivals went on to form a lasting friendship, and Carter eulogized Ford following his 2006 death.

Ford’s son, Steven, read a eulogy on Thursday that has father had written for Carter, who served from 1977 to 1981 and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work.

“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.”

Before the ceremony began, Trump entered the cathedral with his wife, Melania, Trump shook hands with his former vice president, Mike Pence, who he had clashed with after Pence refused to go along with his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.