US prepares for former president Jimmy Carter’s funeral

Six days of funeral observances for Jimmy Carter are due to begin in Georgia, where the former US president died on December 29 at the age of 100.

The first events reflect Mr Carter’s climb up the political ladder, from the tiny town of Plains, Georgia, to decades on the global stage as a humanitarian and advocate for democracy.

The proceedings are scheduled to begin at 10.15am EST (3.15pm GMT) with the Carter family arriving at Phoebe Sumter Medical Centre in Americus.

Former Secret Service agents who protected Mr Carter will serve as pallbearers, walking alongside the hearse as it exits the campus on its way to Plains.

James Earl Carter Jr lived more than 80 of his 100 years in and around the town, which still has fewer than 700 people, not much more than when he was born on October 1 1924.

Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton also grew up in rural settings, but Mr Carter stands out for returning and remaining in his birthplace for his long post-presidency.

The motorcade will move through the centre of Plains, which spans just a few blocks, passing near the girlhood home of first lady Rosalynn Smith Carter, who died in November 2023 at the age of 96, and near where the couple operated the family peanut warehouses.

The route also includes the old train depot that served as Mr Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign headquarters and the petrol station once run by his younger brother Billy.

The motorcade will then pass by the Methodist church where the Carters married in 1946, and the home where they lived and died. The former president will be buried there alongside Rosalynn.

The Carters built the one-storey house, now surrounded by Secret Service fencing, before his first state Senate campaign in 1962 and lived out their lives there with the exception of four years in the Governor’s Mansion and four more in the White House.

After a stop at the Carter family farm and his boyhood home in Archery, outside Plains, the motorcade will head north to Atlanta and will stop at 3pm outside at the Georgia Capitol, where he served as a state senator from 1963 to 1967 and governor from 1971 to 1975.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens will lead a moment of silence. While former governors are honoured with state-run funerals, presidents – even if they served as governors – are memorialised with national rites run by the US federal government.

The motorcade will later arrive at the Carter Presidential Centre, with a private service taking place at 4pm (9pm GMT). The campus includes Mr Carter’s presidential library and the Carter Centre, established by the former president and first lady in 1982.

From 7pm on Saturday through until 6am on Monday (midnight on Saturday to 11am on Monday GMT), Mr Carter’s body will lie in repose for the public to pay their respects around the clock.

The ceremony is expected to include some of The Carter Centre’s global staff of 3,000, whose work concentrating on international diplomacy and mediation, election monitoring and fighting disease in the developing world continues to set a standard for what former presidents can accomplish.

Mr Carter, who delivered its annual reports until 2019, won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize in part for this post-presidential work. His grandson Jason Carter now chairs the board.

The former president’s remains will travel next to Washington, where he will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until his funeral at 10am on Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral.

President Joe Biden, a Carter ally, will deliver a eulogy.

The Carter family will then return to bury its patriarch in Plains after a private hometown funeral at 3.45pm (8.45pm GMT) at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Mr Carter, a devout evangelical, taught Sunday School for decades.

Mr Carter will be buried afterward in a private graveside service, in a plot visible from the front porch of his home.