President Carter’s funeral service to be held on Jan. 9

WASHINGTON NATIONAL CATHEDRAL

The funeral service for former President Jimmy Carter will be held Jan. 9 at Washington National Cathedral and will cap more than a week of remembrances honoring the 39th president of the United States, who died in Georgia at the age of 100 on Sunday. ERIN SCHAFF — THE NEW YORK TIMES

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By Peter Baker

The New York Times

WASHINGTON >> Former President Jimmy Carter’s state funeral at Washington National Cathedral will be held on Jan. 9, featuring a eulogy by President Joe Biden and culminating more than a week of ceremonies and honors, organizers said Monday.

Biden also ordered the federal government to close on Jan. 9 and declared it a national day of mourning. Because of the New Year’s holiday, the eight-day plan that organizers had long envisioned for Carter’s memorial services will not begin until later this week. The former president’s body will be brought to Atlanta by motorcade and lie in repose on Saturday and Sunday at the Carter Center, which was the home of his post-presidential humanitarian work.

The body of Carter, who died at his home in Plains, Georgia, at 100 on Sunday, will then be flown on Monday, Jan. 6, to Washington. It will lie in state at the Capitol, as have several presidents, going back to Abraham Lincoln. Thousands of people are expected to file through the Rotunda to pay their respects, including lawmakers, diplomats and everyday Americans.

The service at the cathedral, which traditionally hosts state funerals for presidents as well as other major American figures, will be the highlight of the remembrances. Other former presidents are expected to attend, but it was not clear whether President-elect Donald Trump, who has regularly denigrated Carter, would be invited or attend.

In addition to Biden, Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson and chair of the board of the Carter Center, will speak at the cathedral. Eulogies will also be read from two people who were close to Carter but who have already died: former President Gerald Ford, the Republican who was defeated by Carter in 1976 but went on to become a friend, and former Vice President Walter Mondale, Carter’s running mate. Ford died in 2006 and Mondale in 2021. The eulogies are set to be read by their sons, Steven Ford and Ted Mondale.

After the cathedral service, Carter’s body will be brought back to Georgia for burial. Initial plans once called for it to be transported by train, but Carter objected. “If you take my cold, dead body across the U.S. by train, I’ll haunt you until the day you die,” he told a staff member. So instead, his body will return to Georgia on a military flight.

His body will be interred next to that of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, his wife of 77 years who died at 96 in November 2023, in a family plot next to a willow tree at the edge of a pond in the small town of Plains, where they both grew up and spent most of their lives.