Carter Funeral Will Include Ford, Mondale Eulogies

The first funeral for a former Democratic president since Lyndon B. Johnson died in early 1973 will be held on Jan. 9, which President Biden has declared a national day of mourning. Jimmy Carter's state funeral will be held at Washington National Cathedral, ABC News reports. The former president will lie in state in the US Capitol Rotunda from Jan. 7 until Jan. 9, reports the AP. The Carter Center said Monday that the invitation from Congress was "respectfully and gratefully accepted."

• Schedule. Carter died Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia. According to a schedule released by the Carter Center on Monday, a funeral procession beginning Jan. 4 will include a stop at his boyhood farm, the Washington Post reports. He will be taken to the state Capitol in Atlanta before lying in repose at the Carter Center for three days. He will then be flown to Washington, DC, where his military service will be honored with a stop at the US Navy Memorial before he is taken to the Capitol.

• Eulogies. Biden revealed last year, weeks after the former president entered hospice care, that Carter had asked him to deliver his eulogy. The New York Times reports that there will also be eulogies from two people Carter outlived: His immediate predecessor, Gerald Ford, and Walter Mondale, his vice president. The eulogies will be read by their sons, Steven Ford and Ted Mondale.
• Guests. Foreign leaders and former presidents are expected to attend the funeral, though it's not clear whether Donald Trump will be among them.
• The final stage. After the state funeral, Carter will be taken back to Plains for a private funeral service at Maranatha Baptist Church, where he used to teach Sunday school. He will then be interred next to Rosalynn, his wife of 77 years, who died last year.
• Transport. Carter will be taken back to Georgia on a military plane. The Times reports that at one point, the plan was to take him there by train, but he told a staff member: "If you take my cold, dead body across the US by train, I'll haunt you until the day you die."

(More Jimmy Carter stories.)