Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Jim­my Carter, the 39th U.S. Pres­i­dent, was ho­n­oured with the pageantry of a state fu­ner­al in the na­tion’s cap­i­tal. He will lat­er be ho­n­oured a sec­ond ser­vice and bur­ial in his tiny Geor­gia home­town that launched a De­pres­sion-era farm boy to the world stage.

The five liv­ing cur­rent and for­mer pres­i­dents were in at­ten­dance at the Wash­ing­ton DC ser­vice: Joe Biden, Bill Clin­ton, Barack Oba­ma, Don­ald Trump and George W. Bush. Al­so present were cur­rent and for­mer vice pres­i­dents, first ladies, supreme court jus­tices and con­gres­sion­al lead­ers.

In­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­dees in­clud­ed Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau and the UK’s Prince Ed­ward, who had been seat­ed to­geth­er.

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden de­liv­ered the eu­lo­gy. Oth­er speak­ers in­clud­ed Steve Ford, who read re­marks writ­ten by his fa­ther, for­mer Pres­i­dent Ger­ald Ford, be­fore his death; for­mer Carter ad­vis­er Stu Eizen­stat; and Ja­son Carter, one of Jim­my Carter’s grand­sons.

Joe Biden be­gan his re­marks by re­call­ing how his re­la­tion­ship with Carter be­gan, by en­dors­ing the Geor­gian ahead of the 1976 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

Re­peat­ing “char­ac­ter” sev­er­al times as 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 har­bour,” Biden said, al­so not­ing the im­por­tance of stand­ing up to “abuse in pow­er.”

The US Pres­i­dent used his re­marks to in­ter­twine what he sees as the im­por­tance of Carter’s own faith in God, and an en­dur­ing faith in Amer­i­ca it­self.

“The very jour­ney of our na­tion is a walk of sheer faith, to do the work, to be the coun­try we say we are, to be the coun­try we say we want to be,” Biden said. “To­day many think he was from a by­gone era, but in re­al­i­ty, he saw well in­to the fu­ture.”

Biden al­so re­called Carter as a “South­ern Bap­tist who led on civ­il rights,” “bro­kered peace” and, along with Mon­dale, formed a “mod­el part­ner­ship” of what it means to serve in the White House.

“I miss him but I take so­lace in know­ing that he and his beloved Ros­alynn are re­unit­ed again,” Biden said.

Biden end­ed his re­marks say­ing, “God bless you, Jim­my Carter."

He grazed his left hand along Carter’s flag-draped cas­ket as he passed by it in a re­turn to his seat in the front row.

Al­so, dur­ing the state fu­ner­al ser­vice in the US cap­i­tal the Rev. Tony Low­den, Carter’s long­time per­son­al pas­tor, spoke briefly and asked God to grant the for­mer pres­i­dent “eter­nal rest.”

Low­den is among many Black pas­tors Carter has been close to in his life, in­clud­ing Young, whom he met in pol­i­tics. Carter once wrote of how much he was im­pact­ed by some­times at­tend­ing ser­vices as a child at the Black Methodist Epis­co­pal church at­tend­ed by the share­crop­ping fam­i­lies who worked for his fa­ther.

In re­cent years, the home­bound Carter al­so liked to watch Geor­gia Sen. Raphael Warnock’s Sun­day ser­vices at Ebenez­er Bap­tist Church in At­lanta.

Carter’s long­time friend and fel­low Geor­gian, for­mer Amb. An­drew Young, is re­call­ing the un­like­ly in­ter­sec­tion be­tween him, a Black man, and Carter, a white man, who both grew up amid Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion.

He re­calls Carter telling him up­on their meet­ing that the fu­ture pres­i­dent was friends with Sumter Coun­ty’s racist sher­iff.”

But time and again I saw in him the abil­i­ty to achieve di­ver­si­ty by the per­son­al­i­ty and up­bring­ing,” Young said. “He went out of his way to em­brace those of us who grew up in all kinds of con­flict.”

Young, an or­dained min­is­ter and one­time aide to Mar­tin Luther King Jr., said Carter “grew up in the tremen­dous di­ver­si­ty of the South, and he em­braced both sides."

Now 92, Young be­came a Geor­gia con­gress­man, At­lanta may­or and Carter’s U.N. am­bas­sador.

Seat­ed at a mi­cro­phone, Young drew laughs from the crowd when he said, “It’s still hard for me to un­der­stand how you could get to be pres­i­dent from Plains, Geor­gia.”

Young, who is Black and was a pas­tor near­by, said he was “ner­vous” some­times dri­ving through the small town.

Speak­ing with­out a pre­pared speech in front of him, Young said he knew Carter “for more than half of my life,” yet “nev­er ceased to be sur­prised” or “in­spired” by the for­mer pres­i­dent’s ac­tions.

“Jim­my Carter was a bless­ing that helped to cre­ate a great Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. And for all of us, and many who are not able to be here, I want to say, ‘Thank you. You have been a bless­ing from God, and your spir­it will re­main with us,’” Young said.

Stu Eizen­stat, who served Carter as a do­mes­tic pol­i­cy aide and has writ­ten a book on his ad­min­is­tra­tion, says he thought his boss’s long­shot pres­i­den­tial bid could, at best, end with a vice-pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion “for re­gion­al bal­ance.”

He said Carter told him flat­ly that he would win the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion. Carter did, and Eizen­stat not­ed that Carter was the on­ly De­mo­c­rat elect­ed pres­i­dent be­tween 1968 and 1992.

Eizen­stat al­so said Carter brought “in­tegri­ty” back to the of­fice fol­low­ing Wa­ter­gate and his help in es­tab­lish­ing the Unit­ed States Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Mu­se­um, which Eizen­stat chairs.

Eizen­stat al­so said Carter “laid the build­ing blocks for a bet­ter world” in terms of the U.S.’ re­la­tion­ships abroad, say­ing he op­er­a­tional­ized the “soft pow­er” of hu­man rights with the “hard pow­er” of mil­i­tary strength.

While so many Carter trib­utes fo­cused on his hu­man­i­tar­i­an work, pub­lic ser­vice and per­son­al de­cen­cy, for­mer White House aide Stu Eizen­stat made a head-on ef­fort to frame the Carter pres­i­den­cy as more suc­cess­ful than vot­ers ap­pre­ci­at­ed at the time. Eizen­stat ticked through leg­isla­tive achieve­ments—and their bi­par­ti­san sup­port.

He not­ed Carter dereg­u­lat­ed U.S. trans­porta­tion in­dus­tries, stream­lined en­er­gy re­search, cre­at­ed FE­MA, and notched the Camp David Ac­cords be­tween Egypt and Is­rael. He em­pha­sized that Carter’s ad­min­is­tra­tion se­cured the re­lease of the Amer­i­can hostages in Iran, though it did not hap­pen un­til af­ter his 1980 de­feat.

“He may not be a can­di­date for Mount Rush­more, but he be­longs in the foothills,” Eizen­stat said.

Ja­son Carter is the most high-pro­file of the Carter grand­chil­dren and great-grand­chil­dren. Like his grand­fa­ther, he was a Geor­gia state sen­a­tor and lost a gov­er­nor’s race. An At­lanta at­tor­ney, Ja­son Carter serves as The Carter Cen­ter board chair­man, groomed by his grand­par­ents to take over when they fi­nal­ly re­tired in their 90s.

Carter in­sist­ed his grand­par­ents were nor­mal: teach­ing grand­chil­dren to fish, mod­el­ling fru­gal­i­ty by re­wash­ing Zi­ploc bags, and mail­ing birth­day cards with a bit of cash.

Ja­son Carter high­light­ed their love of fam­i­ly as he de­scribed his grand­par­ents and their house: “Walls pa­pered with pic­tures of chil­dren and great-grand­chil­dren.”

“They had a lit­tle rack next to the sink where they’d hang Zi­ploc bags to dry."

Carter, he said, “Even­tu­al­ly did get a cell phone.”

“They were small-town peo­ple who nev­er for­got who they were and where they were from no mat­ter what hap­pened in their lives ... But I re­al­ize we are not here be­cause he was just a reg­u­lar guy.”

“As gov­er­nor of Geor­gia a half-cen­tu­ry ago, he preached an end to racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and mass in­car­cer­a­tion,” he said.

At the end of the fu­ner­al ser­vice at the Na­tion­al Cathe­dral in Wash­ing­ton DC, Jim­my Carter’s cas­ket was placed in the hearse and de­part­ed the cathe­dral.

The cas­ket, along with Carter’s fam­i­ly and guests, trav­elled to Joint Base An­drews, with the fi­nal des­ti­na­tion be­ing Geor­gia.

Jim­my Carter will be buried in his home­town of Plains, Geor­gia, fol­low­ing a pri­vate fu­ner­al ser­vice at Maranatha Bap­tist Church, where the for­mer pres­i­dent taught Sun­day school. —(AP)