As the U.S. says goodbye to former President Jimmy Carter, you can watch a continuous stream of the many public memorial events dedicated to the 39th president. You can also learn more about his life (including a timeline), his legacy as a humanitarian and statesman, as well as how he contributed to public health, plus how funerals of former presidents are planned.
Former President Jimmy Carter’s remains, which had been lying in repose at the Carter Presidential Center since Saturday, left the Atlanta campus Tuesday morning, accompanied by his children and extended family. Special Air Mission 39 departed Dobbins Air Reserve Base north of Atlanta and will arrive at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, with a motorcade into Washington and the Capitol, where members of Congress will pay their respects at a service scheduled for 4:30 p.m. EST.
Watch Carter’s service at the U.S. Capitol at 4:30 p.m. ET. in the player above.
In Georgia, eight military pallbearers held Carter’s casket as canons fired on the tarmac nearby. They carried it to a vehicle that lifted it to the passenger compartment of the aircraft, the iconic blue and white Boeing 747 variant that is known as Air Force One when the sitting president is on board. Carter never traveled as president on the jet, which first flew as Air Force One in 1990 with President George H.W. Bush on board.
Carter, who died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, will then lie in state Tuesday night and again Wednesday. He receives a state funeral Thursday at Washington National Cathedral. President Joe Biden will deliver a eulogy.
There are the familiar rituals that follow a president’s death — the Air Force ride back to the Beltway, a military honor guard carrying a flag-draped casket up the Capitol steps, the Lincoln catafalque in the Rotunda.
There also will be symbolism unique to Carter. As he was carried from his presidential center, a military band played hymns — “Amazing Grace” and “Blessed Assurance” for the outspoken Baptist evangelical who called himself a “born-again Christian” when he sought and won the presidency in 1976.
In Washington, his hearse will stop at the U.S. Navy Memorial, where his remains will be transferred to a horse-drawn caisson for the rest of his trip to the Capitol. The location nods to Carter’s place as the lone U.S. Naval Academy graduate to become commander in chief.
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.
