Former President Jimmy Carter’s state funeral at Washington National Cathedral will be held on Jan. 9, featuring a eulogy by President Biden and culminating more than a week of ceremonies and honors, organizers said on Monday.
Because of the New Year’s holiday, the eight-day plan that organizers had long envisioned will not kick off until later this week. Mr. Carter 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.
Mr. Carter, who died at his home in Plains, Ga., at 100 on Sunday, will then be flown on Monday, Jan. 6, to Washington. He will lie in state at the Capitol, as several presidents going back to Abraham Lincoln have. 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 J. Trump, who has regularly denigrated Mr. Carter, would be invited or attend.
In addition to Mr. Biden, Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson and chairman of the board of the Carter Center, will speak at the cathedral. Eulogies will also be read from two people who were close to Mr. Carter but who have already died: former President Gerald R. Ford, the Republican who was defeated by Mr. Carter in 1976 but went on to become a friend, and former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, Mr. Carter’s running mate and partner. Mr. Ford died in 2006 and Mr. Mondale in 2021. The eulogies are set to be read by their sons, Steven Ford and Ted Mondale.
After the cathedral service, Mr. Carter will be brought back to Georgia for burial. Initial plans once called for him to be transported by train, but Mr. 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, he will return to Georgia on a military flight.
He will be interred next to the 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.
The events will be the first presidential funeral since George H.W. Bush died in 2018 and come at a contentious time in American politics, as one president prepares to turn over the White House to another. In accordance with federal law, Mr. Biden ordered flags lowered to half-staff for the next 30 days, meaning they will still be lowered on Jan. 20, when Mr. Trump is inaugurated.
That the services will occur on Mr. Biden’s watch during his final days in office spares at least some awkward moments and decisions, since he and not Mr. Trump will be the sitting president at the time of the service.
Mr. Biden in some ways had the closest relationship with Mr. Carter among the other members of the rarefied presidents’ club. He was the first Democratic senator to endorse Mr. Carter’s long-shot bid for the White House in 1976, and in 2021 he became the first sitting president to honor Mr. Carter by visiting him at his home in Plains.
“His compassion and moral clarity lifted people up and changed lives and saved lives all over the globe,” Mr. Biden said in televised remarks on Sunday night from his vacation in St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. “Jimmy Carter is an example of simple decency.”
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