January 9, 2025
Family members, friends, and political leaders gathered today at the Washington National Cathedral to honor the life of former president Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29 at age 100. All five living presidents and most of their wives attended: George W. Bush and Laura Bush were there, along with Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Melania Trump, and Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden.
Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, were also there, meeting Trump for the first time since January 6, 2021, when Trump tweeted to the rioters attacking the U.S. Capitol that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” redoubling the crowd’s fury and sparking chants of “Hang Mike Pence.”
Pence shook Trump’s hand; his wife stayed seated, looking straight ahead. While Obama, sitting next to Trump, spoke to him, former president Bush refused to acknowledge Trump, instead walking past him and giving a familiar greeting to Obama.
By virtue of living to age 100, Carter survived many of his contemporaries, and some left behind eulogies for him. Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, died in 2021 but recorded his memories of working with Carter in the White House from 1977 to 1981. His son Ted Mondale read the eulogy at today’s service.
Mondale recalled how he and Carter had redefined the role of the vice president of the United States, which had fallen into eclipse when President George Washington shut his own vice president, John Adams, out of his central circle of advisors and never recovered. Mondale recalled that Carter had honored his wish to change that pattern by becoming a full partner in the administration. Carter conferred with him regularly, put him in charge of certain central issues, and the two men became close friends.
Mondale also remembered that Carter was farsighted, ignoring short-term political interests to protect the next generations from harm. He tried to put the nation on a path that would find alternatives to fossil fuels, and did his best to advance women’s rights. He pushed for a law to extend the time for states to approve the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to make women’s equality part of the nation’s fundamental law, and he appointed women to positions in his administration and the federal judiciary. Mondale noted that Carter “appointed five times as many women to the federal bench as all of his predecessors combined.”
Mondale recalled Carter’s “extraordinary years of principled and decent leadership, [and] his courageous commitment to civil rights and human rights.” He recalled that toward the end of their time in the White House, in the years immediately after the tumultuous years of President Richard Nixon, with his covert bombing of Cambodia and cover-up of the Watergate break-in, the two men were summing up their administration. The sentence they came up with was: “We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.”
President Gerald Ford also left behind a eulogy for Carter, who had defeated Ford’s reelection attempt in 1976. Despite their political differences, the two men had become friends in 1981 when they traveled to and from the funeral of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who along with Israel’s Menachem Begin had signed the 1978 Camp David Accords negotiated by Carter’s administration that established a framework for a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Over time, Ford and Carter became close friends and agreed to deliver eulogies for each other.
Carter fulfilled his promise in 2006, and today Ford’s son Steve fulfilled his father’s.
Ford spoke to Carter’s deep faith in God when he noted that the former president “pursued brotherhood across boundaries of nationhood, across boundaries of tradition, across boundaries of caste. In America’s urban neighborhoods and in rural villages around the world, he reminded us that Christ had been a carpenter.” “I’m looking forward to our reunion,” Ford concluded. “We have much to catch up on. Thank you, Mr. President. Welcome home, old friend.”
Carter’s grandson Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center’s board of trustees and a former Georgia state senator, emphasized Carter’s integrity: his grandfather’s political convictions reflected his private beliefs. “As governor of Georgia half a century ago, he preached an end to racial discrimination and an end to mass incarceration. As president in the 1970s...he protected more land than any other president in history.... He was a climate warrior who pushed for a world where we conserved energy, limited emissions, and traded our reliance on fossil fuels for expanded renewable sources. By the way, he cut the deficit, wanted to decriminalize marijuana, deregulated so many industries that he gave us cheap flights and…craft beer. Basically, all of those years ago, he was the first millennial. And he could make great playlists.”
Jason Carter called his grandfather’s life a “love story, about love for his fellow humans and about living out the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.” He highlighted his grandfather’s work to bring cases of Guinea worm disease from 3.5 million cases in humans every year to fourteen.
Carter noted that “this disease is not eliminated with medicine. It’s eliminated…by neighbors talking to neighbors about how to collect water in the poorest and most marginalized villages in the world. And those neighbors truly were my grandfather’s partners for the past forty years [and have] demonstrated their own power to change their world.” When Jimmy Carter “saw a tiny 600-person village that everybody else thinks of as poor, he recognized it. That’s where he was from. That’s who he was.” He saw it as “a place to find partnership and power and a place to carry out that commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Essentially, he eradicated a disease with love and respect. He waged peace with love and respect. He led this nation with love and respect.”
President Joe Biden, who was the first senator to endorse Carter’s run for president in 1976, also gave a eulogy today. In what appeared to be a reflection on the incoming president in the audience, who for years has mocked Carter as the worst president in history, Biden focused on what he called Carter’s “enduring attribute: character, character, character.” And, Biden said, quoting the famous saying from ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “Character…is destiny,” both in our lives and in the life of the nation.
Carter taught him, Biden said, that “strength of character is more than title or the power we hold. It’s the strength to understand that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect. That everyone, and I mean everyone, deserves an even shot. Not a guarantee, but just a shot…. [W]e have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor, and to stand up to what my dad used to say is the greatest sin of all: the abuse of power.”
Character, Biden said, is not about being perfect, for none of us are perfect. It’s about “asking ourselves: Are we striving to do…the right things?… What are the values that animate our spirit? To operate from fear or hope, ego or generosity? Do we show grace? Do we keep the faith when it’s most tested?”
Biden noted that Carter lived a faith that commanded its adherents to love their neighbors. He also noted that such a commandment is hard to follow, and that it requires action. It is, he said, the essence of the Gospel and many other faith traditions, and it is also “found in the very idea of America. Because the very journey of our nation is a walk of sheer faith. To do the work, to be the country we say we are, to be the country we say we want to be: a nation where all are created equal in the image of God and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.”
“We’ve never fully lived up to that idea of America,” Biden said, but thanks to patriots like Jimmy Carter, “[w]e’ve never walked away from it either.”
Carter was “[a] white Southern Baptist who led on civil rights. A decorated Navy veteran who brokered peace. A brilliant nuclear engineer who led on nuclear nonproliferation. A hard-working farmer who championed conservation and clean energy.” He “also established a model post-presidency by making a powerful difference as a private citizen in America,” Biden said, showing “us how character and faith start with ourselves and then flow to others.”
“At our best,” Biden said, “we share the better parts of ourselves: joy, solidarity, love, commitment. Not for reward, but in reverence for the incredible gift of life we’ve all been granted. To make every minute of our time here on Earth count.”
“That’s the definition of a good life,” Biden said. It was the life Jimmy Carter lived for 100 years: a “good life of purpose and meaning, of character driven by destiny and filled with the power of faith, hope, and love.”
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Notes:
https://americanoversight.org/timeline/224-p-m/
https://people.com/karen-pence-refuses-greet-donald-trump-jimmy-carter-funeral-8772193
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-vice-presidency/
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/jimmy-carter-eulogy-walter-mondale-full-text/
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/read-gerald-ford-jimmy-carter-eulogy-full-text-rcna187015
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/30/1161050106/jimmy-carter-biden-relationship
https://apnews.com/article/jimmy-carter-president-biden-eulogy-ccf9d465ff5e2f662571630c732df7da
As I watched Jimmy Carter’s service in Washington, I was profoundly moved. One doesn’t necessarily shed grieving tears for a rare and special man who filled his century on earth with extraordinary accomplishments…none greater than simply and so naturally modeling how to well live one’s life.
My tears tonight were mixed; most were those welling from heartfelt gratitude for - and celebration of - his countless and lifelong examples of pure, native decency and grace.
My other tears were the ones of actual mourning…grief for the current deviation in the moral compass of so many in this country. Through an imperfect storm of fear, ignorance and malignancy, 75 millionAmericans elected to empower hate with safe harbor, as was pointedly referenced from the national cathedral’s pulpit today.
But I believe – and I am bedrock certain that Jimmy Carter would have us all understand, and believe in our hearts – that there is absolutely more goodness than bad in this world. He led a life that demonstrated how each and every one of us must - repeat “must”- pitch in, lend a hand (with or without a hammer in it), BE the Light and share that Light.
“Power and title,” as also referenced today, are not at all the answer. “Do unto others…” is.
I’ll vote for that as long as I can. Thank you Jimmy and Rosalyn.
I loved Carter’s grandson’s story of how he would make pancakes and how he made a cradle with his own hands for any one of his grandchildren. The best, however, came from Joe Biden when he spoke about the dignity and respect Jimmy Carter gave everyone, no matter who they were. When Biden was speaking, he glared right at Donald who was squirming in his seat like a child who is bored. Melania never smiled or made any expression. This is what we get to look forward to.
Thank you Heather.