Jimmy Carter honored at memorial service after casket carried by his Secret Service agents
Former president will lie in repose in Atlanta until Tuesday morning
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Your support makes all the difference.Former president Jimmy Carter’s six-day funeral schedule began Saturday morning as former and current Secret Service agents assigned to his detail carried his casket into a hearse and his family honored him in Atlanta.
Carter’s six-day funeral procession began early Saturday at the Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Georgia. Secret Service agents carried his flag-covered casket into a hearse as members of Carter’s family, dressed in black, watched on.
From there, the procession passed through his hometown of Plains, Georgia. Dozens gathered along the town’s main road to mourn the former president. Many mourners saluted his hearse as it passed by.
One person held signs that read, “President Carter, a man of honor,” and “Thank you, President Carter!”
Keaymonda Hollis was one of those present to watch Carter pass by. Her grandfather knew Carter well.
“Growing up here, everyone looked out for each other,” Hollis told the Montgomery Advertiser. “It’s so amazing to me that a person from a small town community can make such an impact on the world. A lot of people really don’t know that he did all these (humanitarian) things. Small town people can make an impact wherever they go.”
The procession then stopped by Carter’s childhood home, known as The Boyhood Home and Farm and maintained by the National Park Service.
There, the National Park Service saluted the 39th president and rang the historic farm bell 39 times.
After a four-hour journey, Carter’s procession arrived in Atlanta. The motorcade stopped in front of the State Capitol before proceeding to the Carter Presidential Center for a private memorial service.
“We’ll have many chances this week to pay tribute to my grandfather, but it was important for all of us that we stop here,” the former president’s grandson Jason Carter said of the Center during the service.
“These buildings, as you all know, are filled with his life, not just because this is a museum to his life, and not just because there’s a collection here of his beloved paintings, but his spirit fills this place, and the real reason that this spirit fills this place is because of the people who are standing here, the people in this room from the library and the museum and the Carter Center itself.”
Carter’s son, James “Chip” Carter, also spoke in his father’s honor, telling a story of how the 39th president helped him pass a Latin exam during his school years.
“[My father] came into my room and said, we were on Christmas vacation, he said, ‘You have your Latin book?’...When he came home that night, we spent an hour and a half, him teaching me Latin that he had learned from my book that day,” James said.
“He did that every day of Christmas vacation, and the first day of the school year after Christmas, I went to my teacher and asked her if she’d let me take the final over again that she’d given us, the midterm test,” he continued. “And she said yes. So after school that day, I took that test, and I made 100.”
“I owed it to my father who spent that kind of time with me.”
After the memorial service, the former president is set to lie in repose at the center until Tuesday morning. From there, his procession will travel to Washington, DC, where he will lie in state before his national funeral service at the National Cathedral on Tuesday.
Carter, a Democrat who served as president from 1977 to 1981, died aged 100 on December 29.
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