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Jimmy Carter honoured with state funeral before burial in Georgia hometown

Carter remembered for humanitarian work and Egypt-Israel peace treaty

Jimmy Carter, the former US president who struggled with a bad economy and a hostage crisis but went on to a long and admired post-White House career, will be honoured at a state funeral in Washington on Thursday.

Fellow Democratic President Joe Biden will eulogize the 39th president who died on December 29 at the age of 100. Republican president-elect Donald Trump will be among the luminaries at the funeral, before Carter's body is returned to Georgia, where Carter was raised as a peanut farmer.

Tens of thousands of Americans over the past two days filed through the Rotunda of the US Capitol to pay their respects to Carter, who served from 1977 to 1981, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work.

On Thursday morning, a military honour guard carried Carter's flag-draped coffin from the Capitol en route to the Washington National Cathedral.

Some said they admired the former Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher who played a key role in the negotiation of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty as a gentle man, rather than a partisan combatant.

"We've come so far from where Jimmy Carter was as a person and it's kinda sad," said Dorian DeHaan, 67, who travelled some 440km from Sugar Loaf, New York, to pay her respects. "I hope that this will be a reminder to people of what we need to get back to — that it's not about the power, it's about the people."

As she waited in the public viewing line outside the Capitol, DeHaan said her daughter married into the family of the president's younger sister, Ruth, presenting the opportunity to meet the former president in Plains, Georgia.

"But it's a sad moment," DeHaan said. "It's the end of an era and I think we kind of have lost this real belief in humanity, in our presidency."

Washington National Cathedral has hosted the state funerals of Carter's immediate predecessor, Gerald Ford, and successor, Ronald Reagan.

Carter attended both men's funerals and gave the eulogy for Ford, joking that they shared a love of a New Yorker magazine cartoon that depicted a little boy looking up at his father, saying, "Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a former president."

Man from plains

Following the state funeral, Carter's remains will be returned to his native Plains where he lived in his 44 post-White House years and made the base of operations for his diplomatic work and charitable efforts including Habitat for Humanity.

Carter lived longer than any other US president and had been in hospice care for nearly two years before his death. His last public appearance was at wife Rosalynn's funeral in November 2023, where he used a wheelchair and appeared frail.

In August, his grandson Jason Carter said Carter was looking forward to casting a ballot for Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris in the November 5 election, which she lost to Trump.

Biden, during his long career in the US Senate, was the first member of that chamber to endorse Carter for president.

Sarah Jolie, 59, had travelled from her home outside of Chicago to pay her respects. She carried a picture of the youth award she received in junior high from the Carter administration for “outstanding achievement in environmental protection services.”

"He just was a hero to me," Jolie said. "He espoused things for generations that nobody else was."