President Jimmy Carter’s six-day state funeral begins in his home state of Georgia

The state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter, who passed on December 29th, 2024, started on Saturday.  The motorcade departed Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Georgia at about 10:30 a.m. and travelled through Carter’s hometown of Plains.

President Carter’s state funeral is a six-day procession that will allow the nation to pay their respects to the 39th U.S. President.

Carter’s remains were carried to the hearse by current and former special agents in charge from the United States Secret Service–Carter Protective Division.

The procession stopped at Carter’s boyhood home for a brief pause in front of the family’s peanut farm. During the pause, the National Park Service honored the late president chiming of the historic farm bell 39 times.

The late president then officially began his final journey to Atlanta, where it arrived at about 3 p.m. It paused at Georgia’s State Capitol for a moment of silence.

In attendance, Republican Governor Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, members of the Georgia legislature and Georgia State Patrol troopers.

The motorcade then proceeded to the Carter Center, where a flower drop site is located at the complex’s large entrance sign.

“He was an amazing man. He was held up and propped up and soothed by an amazing woman, and the two of them together changed the world - and it was an amazing thing to watch so close” son James Earl “Chip” Carter III said in his eulogy referring also to his mother, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were married for 77 years.

The Carter Center is where Jimmy - and Rosalynn – Carter based their post-White House advocacy for public health, democracy and human rights. Jimmy Carter  set a new standard for what former presidents can accomplish after they leave power.

Grandson Jason Carter, who now chairs the center’s governing board, said, “His spirit fills this place”. And to the assembly that included some of the Center’s 3,000 employees worldwide, Jason Carter added “and you continue the vibrant living legacy of what is my grandfather’s life work”.

Chip Carter recalled “the boss” he had to make an appointment to see in the Oval Office, but also “the father” who spent an entire Christmas break learning Latin and teaching his 8th-grade son who had failed a test. When he took that test again, the younger Carter said, he aced it: “I owed it to my father, who spent that kind of time with me.”

Pallbearers on Saturday came from the Secret Service that protected the Carters for almost a half-century and a military honor guard that included Navy service members for the only U.S. President to graduate at the U.S. Naval Academy.

President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Jimmy Carter will lie in repose at the Carter Presidential Center from 7 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Tuesday, in a state funeral open for the public to pay respects around the clock.