WASHINGTON (AP) — Jimmy Carter was celebrated Thursday for his personal humility and public service before, during and after his presidency during a funeral at Washington National Cathedral featuring the kind of pageantry the 39th U.S. president typically eschewed.
All of Carter’s living successors were in attendance, with President Joe Biden, the first sitting senator to endorse his 1976 run for the White House, delivering a eulogy. Biden and others took turns praising Carter’s record — which many historians have appraised more favorably since losing his bid for a second term in 1980 — and extolling his character.
“He built houses for people who needed homes,” said Joshua Carter, a grandson who recalled how Carter regularly taught Sunday school in his native hamlet of Plains, Georgia, after leaving the White House. “He eliminated diseases in forgotten places. He waged peace anywhere in the world, wherever he saw a chance. He loved people.”
Jason Carter, another grandson, praised his grandfather and his wife Rosalynn, who died in 2023. He wryly noted the couple’s frugality, such as washing and reusing Ziploc bags, and the former president’s struggles with his cellphone.
“They were small-town people who never forgot who they were and where they were from no matter what happened in their lives,” said Jason, who chairs the Carter Center, a global humanitarian operation founded by the former president after leaving office.
The extraordinary gathering offered an unusual moment of comity for the nation in a factionalized, hyper-partisan era. Former President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump, political rivals who have mocked each other for years, sat next to each other Thursday and talked for several minutes, even sharing a laugh.
Biden, who will leave office in 11 days, hinted at politics in repeating several times that “character” was Carter’s chief attribute. Biden said the former president taught him the imperative that “everyone should be treated with dignity and respect.”
“We have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor,” Biden said, also noting the importance of standing up to “abuse in power.” Those comments echoed Biden’s typical criticisms of Trump, his predecessor and successor.
As Trump went to his seat before the service began, he shook hands with Mike Pence in a rare interaction with his former vice president. The two men had a falling out over Pence’s refusal to help Trump overturn his election defeat to Biden four years ago. Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November, entered afterwards and was not seen interacting with him. Michelle Obama, the former first lady, did not attend.
Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, living so long that two of the eulogies were written by people who died before him — his vice president Walter Mondale and his White House predecessor Gerald Ford.
“By fate of a brief season, Jimmy Carter and I were rivals,” said the eulogy from Ford, which was read by his son Steven. “But for the many wonderful years that followed, friendship bonded us as no two presidents since John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.”
Carter defeated Ford in 1976 but the presidents and their wives became close friends, and Carter eulogized Ford at his own funeral.
Days of formal ceremonies and remembrances from political leaders, business titans and rank-and-file citizens have honored Carter for decency and using a prodigious work ethic to do more than obtain political power.
The proceedings began Thursday morning as military service members carried Carter’s flag-draped casket down the east steps of the U.S. Capitol, where the former president had laid in state, to be transported to the cathedral. There was also a 21-gun salute.
At the cathedral, the Armed Forces Chorus sang the hymn “Be Still My Soul” before Carter’s casket was brought inside.
