Jimmy Carter is remembered on a day of reflection

David Lightman, Tribune News Service

The nation this week celebrated Jimmy Carter, the religious man who truly practiced what he preached. The services in Washington Thursday were reflections and solemn tributes, not so much for the 39th president but for a man who lived a rich, rewarding life. “Through it all he showed us how character and faith starts with ourselves and then flows to others,” said President Joe Biden, a longtime friend and political ally. The soft-spoken one-time peanut farmer from Plains will be remembered as a Renaissance man, said former White House adviser Stuart Eizenstat, who described the 39th president as a “farmer, businessman, nuclear engineer, Naval submarine officer, woodworker, painter, fly fisherman, music lover, poet, author, Sunday school teacher, creator of the Carter Center and yes, loving husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather and Nobel Peace Prize winner.”

Carter, at 100 the nation’s longest living president, died Dec. 29 at his home in Plains. The scene this week in Washington, at the National Cathedral Thursday and as he was lying in state for three days at the Capitol, was unlike anything the country had seen in years. People waited in blocks-long lines in single-digit wind chills to get a five-minute glimpse of the casket. At the Capitol service, Washington’s Democratic mayor sat with Supreme Court justices appointed by presidents of both parties. President-elect Donald Trump paused on his way to a Republican strategy session to quietly pay tribute in the Capitol Rotunda. Thursday, he and his wife Melania Trump joined other presidents at the Cathedral. He took his seat near the end of the second row and chatted briefly with former President Barack Obama.

Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter: They heard Steve Ford, son of President Gerald Ford, offer a warm eulogy written by his father, former President Gerald Ford. Carter and Ford battled in a fierce race for the White House in 1976 but became friends in the years that followed, eventually agreeing to prepare eulogies for each other’s funerals. Ford died in 2006. Steve Ford Thursday read his father’s remarks. He remembered how the two men bonded as they flew to Cairo in 1981 to attend Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s funeral. They talked about families, presidential libraries and much more.

They found: ”It’s a long way between Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Plains, Georgia. But distances have a way of vanishing when measured in values rather than miles,” Steve Ford said.

His father represented the Grand Rapids area as a congressman before becoming president in 1974. Steve Ford was followed by Ted Mondale, son of Walter Mondale, Carter’s vice president, who died in 2021. Ted Mondale quoted his father recalling “Carter was a man of his word.”

The service: It was all a reminder that in this age of relentless social media sniping, there is a place for warmth, for doing good. Biden sat on the right side of the front pew on the aisle. Seated next to him were First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Former President Bill Clinton was in the second row’s aisle seat, next to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush. Obama and the Trumps were also seated in that row. Speakers remembered Carter’s post-presidential efforts to broker peace in other countries, eliminate diseases around the world and build homes for those in need.

“He waged peace anywhere in the world he saw hope,” said grandson Joshua Carter. He built homes with Habitat for Humanity. He led the worldwide effort to eliminate guinea worm disease. And he almost always made sure he was back in Georgia on Sundays to teach his Bible class. “Georgia wasn’t just on Jimmy’s mind, it was in his blood,” said Steve Ford.

A return to Washington: It was almost ironic that Carter should humble Washington in the week that Joe Biden prepares to leave office — ridiculed by critics as too old and too liberal — and Trump gets ready to move into the White House. Carter never seemed to fit in this city. He was elected in 1976 as the antidote to the scandal-scarred Watergate era, two years after Richard Nixon became the first president ever to resign. Carter had no ties to the nation’s capital, having been a one-term governor of Georgia. One of Carter’s earliest Washington supporters was Biden, then a first-term US senator. Biden saw him then as someone willing to go outside conventional political lines. “Today many think he’s from a bygone era,” Biden said Thursday. “But in reality he saw far into the future. A white Southern Baptist who led on civil rights. A decorated Navy veteran who brokered peace.”

Carter vowed during his 1976 campaign he would never lie to the public. He tried mightily to make the presidency more relatable, walking down Pennsylvania Avenue during his inauguration, carrying his own bags as he traveled, wearing a comfortable sweater as he addressed the nation, and selling the presidential yacht.

His priorities would be different, too. Human rights as foreign policy. Energy conservation as fuel prices soared. A separate government agency for education.

Much of establishment Washington scoffed. His relations with Congress, run by Democrats throughout his presidency, went from skeptical to downright icy. By Carter’s third year, Sen. Edward Kennedy, a fellow Democrat, launched what would be a futile challenge for the presidential nomination. All that came as Washington felt a sense Carter couldn’t control events. The Soviet Union got involved in Afghanistan. Americans waited in long lines for gasoline. Inflation raged at double digits. Carter lost the White House with 41% of the popular vote, the worst showing for an incumbent president in 48 years.

None of that was remembered this week during the services. While it’s hardly unusual for VIPs to draw bipartisan praise once they’re retired or dead, what was striking was how speakers lauded Carter largely for his entire life, not his four years in Washington. He will be missed, they said, and his legacy will live on. “Jimmy Carter has earned his place in heaven,” Eizenstat said, “but just as he was free with sometimes unsolicited advice for his presidential successors, the Lord of all creation should be ready for Jimmy’s recommendations on how to make God’s realm a more peaceful place.”