Presidential Funeral Updates: Jimmy Carter’s Hometown Gives Him a Final Farewell (2025)

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Here’s the latest on the services.

The Rev. Tony Lowden, who served as Mr. Carter’s personal pastor until his death, presided over an intimate service for the 39th president earlier in the evening at Maranatha Baptist Church. Mr. Carter, he said, gave the country a lesson on “faith and hope” as the country undergoes a transition in presidential power.

“Don’t let his legacy die,” he told Mr. Carter’s family. “Don’t let this nation die. Let faith and hope be our guardrails.”

The service at the church, where Mr. Carter taught Sunday school well into his 90s, reflected the modest life he led outside the presidency and stood in stark contrast to the pomp-filled state funeral earlier in Washington, as five living U.S. presidents gathered to bid farewell to one of their own.

In his eulogy, President Biden told mourners there that Mr. Carter had shown the world what it meant to be a “practitioner of good works, and a good and faithful servant of God and the people.”

“Today, many think he was from a bygone era,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Carter, who sought to heal the nation after the traumas of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War as he presided over a tumultuous time, from 1977 to 1981. “But in reality, he saw well into the future.”

Mr. Carter’s grandson Jason also paid tribute to the man he called paw-paw, recounting personal memories about a nuclear engineer who fumbled with a cellphone. He also praised his grandfather’s humanitarian accomplishments, including helping all but eradicate Guinea worm disease, which he said had “existed from the dawn of humanity, until Jimmy Carter.”

Here’s what to know:

• The state funeral: The nation bade farewell to Mr. Carter with a majestic state funeral for a man who was anything but, remembering a peanut farmer from Georgia who rose to the heights of power and used it to fight for justice, eradicate disease and wage peace not war. Speakers paid tribute to him, not only for his accomplishments during four years in the nation’s highest office but also for his relentless humanitarian work around the world in the four decades after he left the White House. Read more about the state funeral.

• Biden’s eulogy: Mr. Biden eulogized Mr. Carter as a man who was driven by a relentless desire to make the lives of other people better, during and after his time in the White House. “He showed us how character and faith start with ourselves and then flows to others,” Mr. Biden said. “At our best, we share the better parts of ourselves — joy, solidarity, love, commitment — not for reward, but in reverence of the incredible gift of life we’ve all been granted, to make every minute of our time here on Earth count.” Read about the president’s remarks.

• A series of tributes: The tributes included eulogies written by former President Gerald R. Ford and former Vice President Walter F. Mondale before their deaths, read by theirs sons, Steven Ford and Ted Mondale. Mr. Carter defeated Mr. Ford in the 1976 election but they later became friends, while Mr. Mondale was his close partner for four years in the White House. Mr. Ford’s eulogy addressed the former president directly: “As for myself, Jimmy, I’m looking forward to our reunion. We have much to catch up on.”

• Five living presidents: In addition to Mr. Biden, former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, as well as President-elect Donald J. Trump, attended, making the funeral the first gathering of the so-called presidents club since Mr. Trump’s election win in November. The same group is expected to gather again in just 11 days for Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Former first lady Michelle Obama missed the service, but sent her condolences to the Carter family.

Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.

In the darkness, it’s now just a blur of flashing blue lights.

The lights are blinding as the motorcade rumbles through the dark to the ranch home.

Residents of Jimmy Carter’s hometown ponder a future without their famous draw.

Many residents have been bracing for Mr. Carter’s death and what it might mean for Plains, a small town of about 500. It will be different now, one woman could be overheard saying in a store on Main Street, as customers in formal military dress stepped inside to get peanut butter ice cream.

“I just don’t know what Plains is going to be like without him,” said Mary Minion, 94, who has remained close with the Carter family since her husband worked as a sharecropper on their land.

Most of the town is centered around the Carters. There’s the presidential seal on the sign as you drive through on a winding road, and the red, white and blue sign across a strip of buildings on Main Street that proclaims the town the home of Jimmy Carter.

And then there are the National Park sites: the high school that both Carters attended, which has been transformed to welcome visitors and introduce them to the couple; the train depot where Mr. Carter started his presidential campaign; and his boyhood farm, just a short drive out of town.

“When the tourists come into town, it makes finances for Plains,” said Jeremiah Thomas, 74, a Plains resident, on Saturday. “Since he retired, every time you look around you’ve got people. It’s a historical place now.”

Now, the modest ranch home where Mr. Carter died and will be buried will eventually open to the public as one last museum.

“Especially with him being buried here, I think that there will be a flow of people here,” said LeAnne Smith, Mr. Carter’s niece. (It might help, she added, to install a few more gasoline pumps.)

But, she added, “I think that the backbone of this community is very, very strong.”

Christina Morales contributed reporting.

Only a wisp of light remains on the horizon, the moon fully visible, as the coffin is carried out.

Members of the Maranatha Baptist Church were also asked to stand. Their eyes filled with tears as they accepted the pastor’s thanks for “making life pleasant" for Carter here.

Jimmy Carter’s descendants have largely kept a low profile.

His oldest son, Jack, pursued a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada in 2006, mounting a challenge against the Republican incumbent, John Ensign. Mr. Carter lost by about 15 percentage points.

The best-known Carter in Georgia politics in recent years is his grandson Jason, who ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for governor against Nathan Deal, a Republican, in 2014. He also served in the State Senate.

Being a Carter could sometimes be more of a burden than a boost in Georgia, especially then, when the state was still considered deep red. Even though his grandfather was a widely admired figure in the state, Georgia voters did not share his political views or many had unfavorable opinions of his time in office. On some issues, including the death penalty, Jason Carter even had to distance himself from his grandfather.

Nevertheless, the former president was still deeply invested in the campaign, with his strategists even including the former president in their daily email updates. And he also offered plenty of unsolicited advice.

“He got elected governor of Georgia by shaking 600,000 hands,” the younger Mr. Carter told The New York Times in 2014. “That’s what he would tell you: ‘You’ve got to go to the grocery store and shake everybody’s hand.’”

After his loss to Mr. Deal, he became the chairman of the Carter Center, the nonprofit founded by his grandparents after they left Washington.

Amy Carter, Mr. Carter’s daughter who spent four years of her childhood in the White House, is perhaps the most famous Carter besides her parents. But she has kept out of public view as an adult, illustrating books and working as a part-time art teacher at a private school in Atlanta.

One of the stories passed around Plains for years was about the time Carter was mowing the church lawn when someone pulled up to ask if this was where Jimmy Carter went to church. It sure was, Carter replied. The man never recognized him.

Several groups of jets flew over the church in what’s called a “missing man” formation, in tribute to a man who served both in the Navy and as commander in chief.

In the final years of his life, Carter was surrounded by a close circle of friends and family.

It was here that Mr. Carter spent much of his post-presidency and the final years of his life, surrounded by a close-knit circle of support. Some came to know Mr. Carter because he was president, others simply because he was a neighbor or friend.

Collectively, they ended up as stewards both of a man in the twilight of life and of the political legacy of a world leader.

“You would do it for any friend, no matter what their position in life is or what their careers were,” said Andi Walker, a neighbor who once lived behind the Carter home and cooked Mr. Carter hundreds of meals over the last few years. “Knowing that he was the former leader of the free world — that wasn’t ever really in the back of my mind when I was doing the things I was doing. It was all about, these are my friends.”

The house was first built in 1961, as the family’s farming businesses flourished and Mr. Carter began his initial foray into politics. Even as Mr. Carter’s political career provided him with official residences elsewhere in Georgia and Washington, he often returned home to Plains.

“His sanctuary, he called it,” said LeAnne Smith, Mr. Carter’s niece. “He always came back to it, no matter what.”

The presidency changed what it meant to live in Plains. It meant background checks when Ms. Walker, the neighbor, purchased a plot of land that touched the perimeter of the Carter land. It meant that the Carter home became more of a compound, surrounded by a gate and a building that served as a Secret Service checkpoint.

And it meant that when Mr. Carter went about his day — walking hand in hand with Rosalynn, his wife, slipping into Home Depot for some wood or a saw, or running for four miles in his younger years — he was trailed by agents.

“Being a Secret Service agent, you’re not supposed to become attached to your protectees,” said Alex Parker, who served as head of Mr. Carter’s detail for more than a decade. But, he acknowledged, “President Carter just had this personality that draws you in.”

There were the trips across the world and country, from North Korea to the Gaza Strip, from Colorado to Washington. But there were also the outings closer to home to check on crops on the Carter farm, go fly-fishing or survey the farm ponds. (Emptying bags of fertilizer into a pond is not technically part of protective duties, Mr. Parker said, but the agents pitched in.)

“President Carter just wanted to be a real person, a common person,” Mr. Parker said. “He didn’t like all the fancy things that some people would like.”

When Randy Dillard, who spent years supervising Mr. Carter’s boyhood farm, took over overseeing maintenance at the ranch home, the Carters presented him with a list. Their focus was not on updating the eye-popping, bright colors that were in style when they built their home or the aging appliances, but clearing away cobwebs or stray branches.

Any changes were carefully discussed — or shut down.

“There was nothing to me more important than what they wanted,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend who, at Mr. Carter’s urging, became superintendent of the national historical park, preserving sites in Plains associated with the former president.

Ms. Stuckey would clear her schedule at a moment’s notice when the Carters called, and hosted the couple at her home each Saturday night for dinner. And while she consulted with other presidential libraries and parks, only her president, she would say proudly, was really living in hers.

In the final years, there were difficult conversations, familiar to anyone who has cared for an aging person, about installing ramps and switching out furniture for ease and comfort. Ms. Walker sent meals — spaghetti, a vegetable plate, or the breakfast-for-dinner combination of eggs and bacon that Mr. Carter loved — in the middle of the week.

There were also the discussions about how to care for the house and garden once both Carters died. They will be buried together in their garden at home, among the kumquat tree and blueberry bushes, the white azaleas and roses, and the pollinator plants. Mr. Dillard will continue to tend to the white flowers around the gravestones, the impatiens in spring and the pansies in winter.

Since Mr. Carter died, it has been bittersweet for those who cared for him in Plains in his final years. They have consoled each other that he was at peace and reunited with Rosalynn, meaning, as Ms. Stuckey, said, “he got his wish the other day.”

Mr. Dillard, as one of the longest-serving employees at the park, rang the bell at the boyhood farm 39 times, marking Mr. Carter’s time as the 39th president and his passage through Plains to Atlanta. Mr. Parker was among the agents who carried his coffin as a pallbearer from the hospital. Ms. Stuckey and Ms. Walker have been among the Plains residents who have been sharing their memories of Mr. Carter, a friend who happened to once be president.

They are starting to contemplate what it will be like to live in Plains without Mr. Carter, and to drive by an empty house. It will transition from residence to museum, under National Park Service supervision.

“The structure is there,” Ms. Walker said. “But I don’t think that homeyness feel that you got when you went in just to visit and be with them will ever be there.”

Carter’s hometown funeral reflects a modest life outside the presidency.

The two funeral services capture the breadth of Mr. Carter’s life as both president and the son of a peanut farmer. After his service in the Navy, and his terms as Georgia governor and as president, Mr. Carter repeatedly returned to his ranch house in the small town of about 500.

The private service will take place at Maranatha Baptist Church. For a man who often shied away from expense or excessive attention, the service offers a more intimate and personal farewell for his family and neighbors.

“This is home, and I’d rather be here at home,” said LeAnne Smith, 63, Mr. Carter’s niece. And with Mr. Carter set to be buried next to his wife in their garden, Ms. Smith added, “it gives me a good feeling knowing that they’re together.”

Michelle Obama missed the state funeral because of a conflict, a spokeswoman said.

A person familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, said the former first lady was in Hawaii and had a scheduling conflict.

The other four living men who have served as president were at the funeral with their spouses. President Biden attended with his wife, Dr. Jill Biden; Bill Clinton with Hillary Rodham Clinton; George W. Bush with Laura Bush; and President-elect Donald J. Trump with Melania Trump.

Mrs. Obama attended the funeral of Mr. Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, in 2023, along with the rest of the living first ladies. Mr. Obama did not attend.

At Jimmy Carter’s funeral, a rare image of presidential unity.

That meant that for the first time since Mr. Trump began his assault on what he called the Washington swamp, he and the other four living presidents, including the three who campaigned against him, appeared to be on the same page. Not because of a dress code, but because of their coded dress.

It made as clear a statement about transition of power and continuity as anything said during the actual certification of the election by the Senate earlier in the week (or anything Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama appeared to be chuckling about privately). And it suggested that Mr. Trump was fully cognizant of what it meant to look as if he were a traditional part of the very, very exclusive club that is the presidency, even as he attempts to transform it.

As Jason Carter, one of Mr. Carter’s grandsons, said to the men who had sat in the Oval Office, they share a knowledge of “the human side of the presidency like no others.”

Indeed, it was not insignificant that for one of rare times since he began his second run for the presidency, Mr. Trump, at a moment of such public pageantry, abandoned his signature uniform of flag blue suit, white shirt and bright red tie — the outfit that matches the flag and that has become the de facto uniform of most of the Republicans in the new administration.

Instead he wore a darker suit and a Democratic blue tie, one that seemed to reach across the aisle to honor the man who lay in state, and one just a touch brighter than that worn by Mr. Bush and in the same color family as the tie worn by Mr. Biden. Sure, it was just an accessory, but the harmonics were hard to miss in the sea of black.

Nor was it insignificant that Mrs. Trump — who had stood apart from the other first ladies clad in black at Rosalynn Carter’s funeral by wearing a gray Dior suit — chose a black Valentino coat with a broad white collar, dusted with a print of black and white flowers. In the coat she fit in seamlessly with Dr. Biden in her black Schiaparelli suit (the same one Dr. Biden had worn to Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral service in Westminster Abbey), as well as with Mrs. Clinton in her black trouser suit and Mrs. Bush in her black dress.

The Trump transition team has said that one of the differences between the president’s first term and the plans for his second is that this time around, Mr. Trump understands how the town works. In his many social media posts and public statements, Mr. Trump often seems to relish lobbing verbal grenades at that town, but at Mr. Carter’s funeral, he seemed, for one brief moment, to be trying to appear as if he were part of it.

The president and the rockers: How Carter bonded with the Allman Brothers.

“In fact, he stayed like two hours,” said Mr. Leavell, a keyboardist who was 21 at the time and had little acquaintance with politics. “He listened. He was really into the music we were doing. He asked questions about the recording process, the state of the music business. He expressed his love for the music.”

That session was the beginning of an enduring relationship between the uptight Southern Baptist and the hard-partying band famous for its iconic slide guitar sound, extended concert jams and hits such as “Ramblin’ Man.” The relationship proved particularly beneficial when Mr. Carter ran for president a few years later and the Allman Brothers were arguably the hottest band in the country.

Looking for help building what seemed a quixotic quest at the time, Mr. Carter enlisted the band as partners in fund-raising at a benefit concert on Nov. 25, 1975, in Providence, R.I.

“First of all, I’m running for president,” Mr. Carter told the crowd at the civic center, most of whom probably had little idea who he was. “Secondly, I’m going to be elected. Third, this is very important: I need your help. Will you help me? Fourth, I want to introduce you to my friends and your friends, the ones who are going to help me get elected along with you, the great Allman Brothers.”

The concert went on to generate a reported $60,000 and provided a cash infusion for the campaign in the Iowa caucuses, which helped propel Mr. Carter to the White House.

“We knew the consequences,” said Mr. Leavell, who was invited by the Carter family to attend Mr. Carter’s state funeral in Washington on Thursday. “It was the first time they had matching funds in a presidential campaign.”

Other Southern rock groups such as the Marshall Tucker Band and Charlie Daniels also performed on behalf of Mr. Carter, but the early tie to the Allman Brothers was seen as pivotal in those critical days.

“We believed in him 100 percent,” said Mr. Leavell, who went on to start his own band after the Allman Brothers broke up and is the longtime principal keyboardist and musical director for the Rolling Stones. “We were hopeful and Carter seemed to offer that hope. He was genuine. You could just tell he meant what he said. There was no B.S. in any of it.”

And he said there was no clash between the famously strait-laced candidate and the members of a band that was anything but puritanical.

“He did not look down upon us or anybody else who might have been doing what we were doing as musicians and artists,” said Mr. Leavell, noting that Mr. Carter did not disavow Gregg Allman even when he got caught up in a drug trafficking trial just before the presidential election. “Carter didn’t disown him. He didn’t throw him out in the back yard. He remained friends with Gregg.”

Besides his remarkable career in music, Mr. Leavell has also become known as a leader in forestry practices and conservation at a plantation on land belonging to the family of his wife, Rose Lane White Leavell, outside Macon, where they hosted Mr. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn.

“We rode through the woods and talked about trees and the property,” recalled Mr. Leavell, proud of his long association with the former president and the jump-start the band provided. “He really served as a role model for leaders and politicians.”

Biden says Jimmy Carter’s ‘enduring attribute’ was character.

Mr. Biden spent little time recounting Mr. Carter’s accomplishments, as had already been done by other speakers at the funeral. Instead, he focused on “Jimmy Carter’s enduring attribute: character, character, character.”

He said that character was the reason he endorsed Mr. Carter’s presidential campaign in the 1970s, well before many other Democratic politicians. He said it was Mr. Carter’s character that allowed him to survive in a world of powerful pressures.

“It is the story of a man who never let the ties of politics divert him from his mission to serve and shape the world,” he said. “The man had character.”

At times, Mr. Biden’s eulogy echoed the themes of his own presidency, even borrowing from the many speeches he gave about the need to treat people equally and to enact policies that helped to lift up those less fortunate in America.

“We all are created equal in the image of God and deserve to be treated equally,” Mr. Biden said. “Throughout our lives, we’ve never fully lived up to that idea of America. We’ve never walked away from it, either, because of patriots like Jimmy Carter.”

For years, Mr. Biden has warned about the threat to democracy and the rule of law from President-elect Donald J. Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20. With Mr. Trump in the audience, Mr. Biden did not single him out by name. But he delivered a message laced with meaning that could have been aimed at the next president.

“We have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor and to stand up to what my dad used to say is the greatest sin of all: the abuse of power,” Mr. Biden said. “That’s not about being perfect, because none of us are perfect. We’re all fallible. But it’s about asking ourselves, are we striving to do things, the right things?”

Mr. Carter did strive to do the right things, Mr. Biden said, in office and after he left.

“To young people, to anyone in search of meaning and purpose,” Mr. Biden said, “study the power of Jimmy Carter’s example.”

“Jimmy Carter did justly, loved mercy, walked humbly,” he added. “May God bless a great American, a dear friend, and a good man.”

Jimmy Carter’s large family honors his life in Washington and Georgia.

Mr. Carter is survived by the four children from his long marriage to Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19, 2023, at age 96.

Amy Carter, 57, is perhaps the best known of the Carter children, because she was still a young child during her father’s presidential campaign and time in the White House. (Her brothers — John William, now 76, who is known as Jack; James Earl III, 74, who is known as Chip; and Donnel Jeffrey, 71, who is known as Jeff — were all in their 20s.)

The four children attended the funeral services in Washington and are expected to do so in Plains, along with their spouses and Mr. Carter’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Carter family has also been accompanied by Ms. Carter’s sister, Lillian Allethea Smith Wall, Mr. Carter’s personal pastor, and a few longtime family staff members.

Here are brief profiles of Mr. Carter’s children and two grandsons who spoke at his funeral service.

Jason Carter, grandson

The son of Jack Carter, Jason Carter is the chairman of the Carter Center, the nonprofit founded by his grandfather after leaving the White House, and is a partner at an Atlanta law firm. He is the first descendant of Mr. Carter to follow him into Georgia politics: He was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee in the 2014 governor’s race, and he served in the State Senate from 2010 to 2015.

Josh Carter, grandson

The son of Jeff Carter, he worked as a project manager and engineer for Coca-Cola and Lockheed Martin. He has also hosted a sporadic podcast called “Unchanging Principles,” about his family and the work of his grandparents. He helped start a foundation devoted to very early onset inflammatory bowel disease, a rare gastrointestinal ailment in children, which his son was diagnosed with.

Jack Carter, son

John William Carter, known as Jack, is the oldest son of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. He worked in finance and moved to Las Vegas in the early 2000s, where he mounted a failed 2006 bid for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, challenging a Republican incumbent.

Chip Carter, son

James Earl Carter III, who goes by Chip, is his second son. He worked in the family’s peanut business and his father’s political campaigns. He also served on the Plains City Council. Willie Nelson shared in a book and in interviews that he had smoked marijuana at the White House; the former president disclosed in a documentary that it was Chip Carter who smoked with Mr. Nelson. In a speech at the Carter Presidential Library on Saturday, Chip Carter said that, later in life, he grew closer to his parents and admired them even more. “The two of them together changed the world,” he said, “and it was an amazing thing to watch from so close.”

Jeff Carter, son

Donnel Jeffrey is his youngest son. He worked as a computing consultant and was a founder of a company, Computer Mapping Consultants. Josh Carter shared publicly last year that Jeff Carter had been diagnosed several years ago with Parkinson’s disease. One of his sons, Jeremy, died in 2015 of a heart attack.

Amy Carter, daughter

She is the couple’s youngest child and the most widely known from her childhood spent in the White House. She attracted attention after her father left the White House for her political activism, which included an arrest at the South African embassy while protesting apartheid. But for more than 30 years, she has been almost entirely withdrawn from the public stage. She did collaborate with her father on two books, which she illustrated: “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer,” a children’s book, and “Christmas in Plains.”