The Latest: Former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral begins soon

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

Here’s the latest:

Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who won the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Vietnam War, endured humbling defeat after one tumultuous term and then redefined life after the White House as a global humanitarian, died on Dec. 29, 2024, at 100 years old.

Businessman, Navy officer, evangelist, politician, negotiator, author, woodworker, citizen of the world — Carter forged a path that still challenges political assumptions and stands out among the 45 men who reached the nation’s highest office. The 39th president leveraged his ambition with a keen intellect, deep religious faith and prodigious work ethic, conducting diplomatic missions into his 80s and building houses for the poor well into his 90s.

“My faith demands — this is not optional — my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can, with whatever I have to try to make a difference,” Carter once said.

Carter will be buried next to his wife, Rosalynn Carter, in a plot near the home they built before his first state Senate campaign in 1962 and where they lived out their lives with the exception of four years in the Georgia Governor’s Mansion and four years in the White House.

A long line of mourners gathered to pay their respects at the U.S. Capitol Wednesday night.

“President Carter was the governor of the great state of Georgia when I was born,” said Lyn Leverett, among the people who waited in below-freezing weather Wednesday. “So he’s been around my, you know, my whole entire being. And I just want to pay my respects to a decent person.”

“I’m originally from Nashua, New Hampshire, and when I was a child, Jimmy Carter slept at my house,” said Susan Prolman. “He had just won the Iowa caucuses and he was in New Hampshire campaigning for the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire presidential primary. And I created this little poster for him, and he very kindly signed it.”

Kim James, also a Maryland resident, said she had yet to start grade school when Carter was elected and thinks of him more as the white-haired former president who fought disease and advocated for democracy in the developing world and built homes for Habitat for Humanity in the U.S. and abroad.

“He cared about other people,” James said, adding that political leaders today should work harder to replicate that example. “That selflessness — it always stood out.”

“He set a very high bar for presidents, how you can use voice and leadership for causes,” said Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder whose foundation funded Carter’s work to eliminate treatable diseases like the Guinea worm. Gates spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

“Whatever prestige and resources you are lucky enough to have, ideally you can take those and take a even broader societal view in your post private sector career,” Gates said.

Bernice King, daughter of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., compared the two Georgians and Nobel Peace Prize winners.

“Both President Jimmy Carter and my father showed us what is possible when your faith compels you to live and lead from a love-centered place,” said King, who is also planning to attend the Washington service.

No matter how many times one crammed into the modest sanctuary at Maranatha Baptist Church, there was always some wisdom to be gleaned from Carter’s measured, Bible-inspired words.

Carter taught his Sunday school class roughly twice a month to accommodate crowds that sometimes swelled to more than 500. (On the other Sundays, no more than a couple dozen regulars and a handful of visitors usually attended services).

Here, the former commander-in-chief and the onetime first lady, his wife of more than seven decades, were simply Mr. Jimmy and Ms. Rosalynn. And when it came to worshipping with them, all were welcome.

▶ Read about the former president’s Sunday school class

As Carter’s remains left Georgia Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump criticized the late former president during a news conference in Florida for ceding control of the Panama Canal to its home country.

Pressed on if criticism of Carter was appropriate during the solemn funeral rites, Trump responded, “I liked him as a man. I disagreed with his policies. He thought giving away the Panama Canal was a good thing.”

“I didn’t want to bring up the Panama Canal because of Jimmy Carter’s death,” he added, even though he had first mentioned it unprompted.

“To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning – the good life – study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith, and humility,” President Joe Biden said in a statement issued the day Carter died.

Biden spoke later that evening about Carter, calling it a “sad day” but one that “brings back an incredible amount of good memories.”

“I’ve been hanging out with Jimmy Carter for over 50 years,” Biden said in his remarks.

He recalled the former president being a comfort to him and his wife Jill when their son Beau died in 2015 of cancer. The president remarked how cancer was a common bond between their families, with Carter himself having cancer later in his life.

“Jimmy knew the ravages of the disease too well,” said Biden, who scheduled a state funeral in Washington, D.C., for Carter on Jan. 9.

9 a.m. ET: Carter’s body leaves the Capitol where it currently lies in state

9:30 a.m.: His body arrives at the Washington National Cathedral

10 a.m.: The state funeral begins

11:15 a.m.: Carter’s body departs for Joint Base Andrews in Maryland

11:45 a.m.: Cater’s body flies back to Fort Moore, Georgia

2 p.m.: Upon arrival, a motorcade takes Carter’s body to Plains, Georgia

3:30 p.m.: Motorcade arrives at Maranatha Baptist Church for a private service

4:45 p.m.: Motorcade from the church to the Carter residence

5:20 p.m.: The Carter family hosts a final and private interment at the Carter residence

All of the pomp will carry some irony for the Democrat who went from his family peanut warehouse to the Governor’s Mansion and eventually the White House. Carter won the presidency as the smiling Southerner and technocratic engineer who promised to change the ways of Washington — and eschewed many of those unwritten rules when he got there.

“Jimmy Carter was always an outsider,” said biographer Jonathan Alter, explaining how Carter capitalized on the fallout of the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon. “The country was thirsting for moral renewal and for Carter, as this genuinely religious figure, to come in and clean things up.”