WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Walter Mondale thought he would still be around to speak at the funeral for former President Jimmy Carter, who was a little more than three years his senior.

But even though Mondale died first, in 2021, he left behind the eulogy he planned to deliver, which will be read by his son Ted Mondale at Carter’s memorial service Jan. 9 at Washington National Cathedral. Former President Gerald Ford, who died in 2006, likewise left a eulogy that will be read by his son, Steven Ford.

In the tribute he left behind, Mondale hailed Carter especially for making human rights the centerpiece of his foreign policy, for promoting environmental measures long before the term “climate change” became widely known and for placing more women in high office than any of his predecessors had — including an appeals court judge named Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Toward the end of their time in office, Mondale said he and Carter talked about how they wanted their tenure to be remembered. “We came up with this sentence, which to me remains an important summary of what we were trying to do: ‘We told the truth, we obeyed the law and we kept the peace,’ ” Mondale wrote. “That we did, Mr. President.”

With Carter’s support, Mondale became arguably the most empowered U.S. vice president in history to that point and a model for all those who followed.

Rather than being exiled and forgotten in the Old Executive Office Building across from the White House, Mondale was the first vice president given an office in the West Wing, just steps from the Oval Office.

He was also the first to live in a specially designated residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory and had weekly lunches with the president. Carter involved him in every major policy discussion.

In the eulogy, Mondale said they came together in a way that few of their predecessors had.

“Unlike a lot of vice presidents and their presidents, our relationship did not blow up,” he wrote, crediting that to their shared small-town upbringings and Christian faith.

“With his leadership, we created the model vice presidency, a real partnership between the president and the vice president,” Mondale wrote in the eulogy.

Moreover, “we became very close friends. We often spent hours together throughout the day. We were working on real problems, not wasting time.”