Hundreds pack into Washington cathedral for Jimmy Carter funeral

By Bo Erickson, Jeff Mason and Katharine Jackson, Reuters

Hundreds of mourners including all five living current and former US presidents packed into Washington's National Cathedral to mourn, Jimmy Carter, the former US president who struggled with a bad economy and a hostage crisis.

As the sombre 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 honour guard after its trip from the Capitol, where his body had lain in state for two days.

Fellow Democratic President Joe Biden will eulogize the 39th president who died on 29 December 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 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 eulogized Ford following his 2006 death.

Ford's son, Steven, read a eulogy 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."

Biden said 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."

"We have an obligation to give hate no safe harbour.

"Today, many think he was from a bygone era, but in reality, he saw well into the future."

Entering 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.

Trump, who will return to office on 20 January, sat next to former President Barack Obama, with whom he chatted as introductory music played. To Obama's right were Laura and George W. Bush and Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Biden and first lady Jill Biden walked hand in hand and took seats in the first row next to Vice President Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Vice President-elect JD Vance and Biden's son Hunter were also among the mourners. Former vice presidents Al Gore and Pence sat side by side.

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 served from 1977 to 1981, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work.

Some said they admired the former Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher 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 440 km 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."

Washington National Cathedral has hosted the state funerals of Carter's immediate predecessor, Gerald Ford, and successor, Ronald Reagan.

Carter attended both men's funerals and gave the eulogy for Ford, joking that they shared a love of a New Yorker magazine cartoon that depicted a little boy looking up at his father, saying, "Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a former president."

Man from plains

Following the state funeral, Carter's remains will be returned to his native Plains where he lived in his 44 post-White House years and made the base of operations for his diplomatic work and charitable efforts including Habitat for Humanity.

Carter lived longer than any other US president and had been in hospice care for nearly two years before his death. His last public appearance was at wife Rosalynn's funeral in November 2023, where he used a wheelchair and appeared frail.

In August, his grandson Jason Carter said Carter was looking forward to casting a ballot for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 5 November election, which she lost to Trump.

Biden, during his long career in the US Senate, was the first member of that chamber to endorse Carter for president.

Sarah Jolie, 59, had travelled from her home outside of Chicago to pay her respects. She carried a picture of the youth award she received in junior high from the Carter administration for "outstanding achievement in environmental protection services."

"He just was a hero to me," Jolie said. "He espoused things for generations that nobody else was."

- Reuters