A weeklong series of tributes to former President Jimmy Carter culminates on Thursday with a solemn state funeral in Washington that will bring together all five of the nation’s living presidents, who will temporarily put down their partisan swords to bid farewell to one of their own.
Mr. Carter, who has lain in state for the past two days at the Capitol, will be brought to Washington National Cathedral for a 10 a.m. service featuring all the rituals of a national send-off. Then he will be flown back to his hometown, Plains, Ga., for burial outside the modest ranch house where he lived most of his life and died last week.
The service represents the pinnacle of America’s honors to its 39th president, 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. President Biden will deliver a eulogy, as will Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, and Stuart E. Eizenstat, a longtime friend and White House domestic adviser to Mr. Carter.
Eulogies that former President Gerald R. Ford and former Vice President Walter F. Mondale wrote before their own deaths will be read by their 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.
Readings will also be offered by Jason Carter and Joshua Carter, another grandson, and Andrew Young, the civil rights leader who served as Mr. Carter’s ambassador to the U.N., will deliver a homily. Among the musical offerings, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood will sing John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
Also expected to attend the service will be former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as President-elect Donald J. Trump, making for 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 just 11 days later for his inauguration.
Mr. Trump will be the odd man out among the presidents, who view him as a dangerous force and in some cases have denounced him harshly. Even Mr. Bush, the only other Republican in the group, has written in other candidates rather than cast a ballot for Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump has no speaking role and is not a favorite of the Carter family. He has regularly denigrated Mr. Carter over the years and especially so during last year’s campaign, when Mr. Trump used the former president as a foil to attack Mr. Biden. Since Mr. Carter’s death, Mr. Trump has offered a few words of grace but has also not hesitated to excoriate his predecessor for his decision in 1977 to hand control of the Panama Canal over to Panama.
Mr. Biden, who may be the surviving president who was closest to Mr. Carter, has declared Thursday a national day of mourning and closed the federal government to all but necessary operations while flags fly at half-staff. Mr. Carter’s coffin will be brought from the cathedral to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for his last flight aboard a presidential jet used as Air Force One.
After a final private service at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, where Mr. Carter taught Sunday school deep into his 90s, a motorcade with the coffin will make a last journey through Plains to the Carter home.
Navy jets will conduct a flyover in missing-man formation and then Mr. Carter will be interred in a family plot next to Rosalynn Carter, his wife of 77 years, who died in late 2023.
