Jimmy Carter has made one last visit to where his story began.
On Saturday, Jan. 4, funeral plans commenced for the former president, who died on Sunday, Dec. 29 at the age of 100.
After the Carter family arrived at the Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Secret Service members carried Carter’s body into a hearse, which then traveled alongside a motorcade to the politician’s hometown of Plains.
Passing through the town, the motorcade then paused for a short moment in front of the farm that served as Carter’s boyhood home. There, the National Park Service saluted the late president and rang a historic farm bell 39 times — symbolizing Carter’s role as the 39th President of the United States.
Carter and the rest of those in the motorcade then traveled to the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, where the Nobel Peace Prize winner will lie in repose until 6 a.m. local time on Tuesday, Jan. 7.
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The hearse carrying Jimmy Carter’s body at the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm in Archery, Ga., on Jan. 4.
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Carter was born on Oct. 1, 1924, to mother Bessie Lillian Carter and father James Earl Carter Sr. The politician’s dad moved his family to a home in the community of Archery, a few miles from Plains, in 1928, when Carter was four years old.
Carter grew up there and eventually left the home in 1941 to attend college, according to the National Park Service (NPS).
After his father sold the home and the nearby farmland in 1949, per the NPS, the organization later purchased the house and the surrounding seventeen acres in 1994.
After a years-long restoration project, the NPS said the home and farm “were returned to their 1937 appearance,” before the area was opened to the public as the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm in 2000.
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Jimmy Carter in his younger years.
In his 2001 memoir, An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood, Carter recalled moving into the home with his family.
“The front door was locked when we got there, and daddy realized that he had forgotten the key. He tried to raise one of the windows that opened onto the front porch, but a wooden bar on the inside let it come up only about six inches. So he slid me through the crack and I came around to unlock the door from the inside. The approval of my father for my first useful act has always been one of my most vivid memories,” he wrote, per the NPS.
According to The New York Times, Carter recalled the happiness he felt when he and his family first got electricity in the home years after moving in.
“The greatest day in my life was not being inaugurated president, [and] it wasn’t even marrying Rosalynn — it was when they turned the electricity on,” Carter said, per the publication.
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Jimmy Carter in February 2016.
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Carter died at his home in Plains after spending almost two years in hospice care. His funeral proceedings will take place over multiple days, ending in a Jan. 9 interment at his home, where he will be buried next to his late wife Rosalynn Carter, who died at age 96 in November 2023.
After his time lying in repose at the Carter Presidential Center, Carter will then be taken to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Jan. 7, when members of Congress will pay their respects during a service in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Visitors will be able to pay their respects soon after.
Carter will remain there through the early hours of Thursday, Jan. 9, when he will then be moved to the Washington National Cathedral, where his national funeral service will take place.
Later in the day, Carter will be moved back to Georgia for a private funeral service at the Maranatha Baptist Church, before he is buried at his home.
Flags at all federal buildings are scheduled to fly at half-mast for 30 days after Carter’s death, including during Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
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