AMERICA’S oldest living former president has been buried with full honours in Washington.
Streamed live on RTÉ, President Carter’s state funeral on January 9 captured particular Irish attention both back home and among Ireland’s diplomatic corps in the United States.
James Earl Carter, always ‘Jimmy’ as President and Governor of Georgia, was honoured at Washington’s National Cathedral surrounded by world dignitaries.
President Joe Biden touches the flag-draped casket of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on his way to deliver a eulogy during Carter’s state funeral at Washington National CathedralFormer Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton attended alongside former First Ladies Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton.
Recent electoral rivals President-elect Donald Trump and outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris also attended, while current White House incumbent Joe Biden offered the main oratory.
In one of his final acts as President, Biden was chief among those who eulogised Jimmy Carter’s legacy.
In a pointed message to the next incumbent, he told mourners, “we have an obligation to give hate no safe harbour and to stand up to what my dad used to say is the greatest sin of all, the abuse of power.
“We’re keeping the faith with the best of humankind and the best of America, is a story, in my view, from my perspective, of Jimmy Carter’s life.”
The 3,000-strong packed cathedral capped a week of national mourning which saw the 100-year old former president’s US-flag draped coffin travel from his home state of Georgia to the national capital.
He had been receiving hospice care for the past year and was last seen in public attending his wife Rosalynn’s funeral in November 2023.
From L to R, front row, US President Joe Biden, First Lady Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamla Harris, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, second row, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President George W. Bush, his wife Laura Bush, former President Barack Obama, President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump attend the State Funeral Service for former US President Jimmy CarterIreland’s Embassy in Washington DC paid tribute to President Carter’s legacy saying “Ireland joins in mourning the loss of former US President and Nobel peace prize laureate Jimmy Carter…a stalwart champion for peace, human and civil rights, climate and global health. [His] work and friendship extended to the island of Ireland on a number of occasions”.
President Carter welcomed then Taoiseach Jack Lynch for a state visit to the United States in 1979.
At his welcoming ceremony in Washington, the US president said of the US-Irish relationship “we are bound to you because we share common goals…democracy and freedom…peace…mutual trade and common benefit and respect for basic human rights”.
The 39th President broke with tradition in being the first US leader to internationalise the Northern Ireland conflict by issuing a White House statement of support for peace in 1977.
Its lineage to US brokerage of the peace process can be traced to Senator George Michell’s successful stewardship of the Good Friday Agreement some 21 years later.
Ireland’s diplomatic corps in the US said of the former Sunday school preacher turned American president and international peacemaker: “Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann – we will never see the likes of him again.”