Former President Jimmy Carter’s nearly week-long public farewell began Saturday in the tiny Georgia town where he launched the political career that took him to the White House.

The 39th president’s American flag-draped casket was carried in a motorcade heading to his hometown of Plains where he died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, past his boyhood home on the way to Atlanta.

The Carter family, including the former peanut-farmer-turned president’s four children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, accompanied their patriarch in a procession that began at the Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus.

Current and former Secret Service agents who protected the longest-lived president served as pallbearers as the six days of funeral observances for Carter began. Train whistles filled the air as the pallbearers faced the hearse, hands on their hearts, to pay their final respects.

Families and other admirers lined up along the procession route in downtown Plains, near a historic train depot where Carter once headquartered his successful 1976 presidential campaign.

Some carried bouquets of flowers or wore commemorative pins bearing Carter’s photo.

“We want to pay our respects,” said 12-year-old Will Porter Shelbrock, who was born more than three decades after Carter left the White House in January 1981. “He was ahead of his time on what he tried to do and tried to accomplish.”

Shelbrock — who made the trip to Plains from Gainesville, Fla., with his 66-year-old grandmother Susan Cone — said he admires Carter for his humanitarian work building homes for the poor, pushing peace and for installing solar panels on the White House.

“This man, he thought of more than just himself,” said William Browner, 75, who grew up 15 miles away in nearby Parrott, Ga., before moving to Miami.

Carter and his late wife Rosalyn, who died at the age of 96 in November 2023, were born in Plains and lived most of their lives in and around the town, with the exceptions of the late president’s Navy career and his stints as Georgia governor and president.

The procession passed near the Carters’ home on their family farm just outside of Plains.

A few dozen rangers from the National Park Service rang the old farm bell 39 times to honor the 39th president.

The motorcade carrying Carter’s remains then proceeded to Atlanta for a moment of silence in front of the Georgia Capitol and a memorial service at the Carter Presidential Center.

“His spirit fills this place,” said the late president’s grandson, Jason Carter, who serves as board chair for center, while giving opening remarks to start the service.

“And the real reason that his spirit fills this place is because of the people who are standing here.”
Jimmy Carter will lie there in repose until Tuesday morning, when he will be transported to Washington to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.

His state funeral is 10 a.m. Thursday at Washington National Cathedral, followed by a return to Plains for an invitation-only funeral at Maranatha Baptist Church.

He will be buried near his home, next to his late wife.

The former president leaves behind four children, Jack, Chip, Jeff and Amy, as well as 11 grandchildren and 14 grandchildren. Besides his late wife, he was also predeceased by a grandchild.

Carter – a Georgia peanut farmer — became president of the United States during a time of gas shortages, Cold War tensions and the Iran hostage crisis.

He was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1977, after defeating Republican Gerald Ford, whose campaign was burdened by the political baggage he carried from his decision to pardon disgraced President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal.

The Southern liberal Democrat served only one tumultuous four-year term before being swept aside by Republican Ronald Reagan — but in that time he racked up triumphs such as the historic Camp David peace accords, in which Israel and Egypt officially recognized each other’s governments.

Yet Carter’s presidency was marred by events both within and out of his control.

In 1979, a pair of international crises erupted — the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, which led Carter to cancel U.S. participation in the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics; and the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran, following which 52 Americans were held captive for 444 days.

A failed rescue effort by the U.S. military in April 1980 led to the deaths of eight American service members, and crippled Carter’s credibility on national security ahead of that year’s presidential election.

After leaving the White House, Carter turned his attention to humanitarian and charitable endeavors, notably his decades-long commitment to the Habitat for Humanity program, which developed housing for the poor, and the Carter Presidential Center to promote human rights.

Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

With Post wires