Former US president Carter's 6-day funeral gets under way in Georgia
Former US president Jimmy Carter's 6-day funeral started Saturday with a motorcade through his home state. Carter died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on December 29 at the age of 100 and is set to be buried next to his late wife Rosalynn Carter after lying in state at the U.S. Capitol.
Jimmy Carter 's long public goodbye began Saturday in Georgia, with the 39th U.S. president’s flag-draped casket rolling through his tiny hometown and past his boyhood farmhouse on its way to Atlanta, where he climbed the political ladder and based his decades of humanitarian work after leaving the White House.
The former president's six-day state funeral started in Americus at the Phoebe Sumter Medical Center, where current and former Secret Service agents who protected the late president loaded his remains into a black hearse and walked alongside as it rolled off the campus toward Plains. With Carter's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren accompanying their patriarch, a mournful train whistle filled the clear air as the pallbearers faced the hearse, hands on their hearts, for a final goodbye.
In Plains, where Carter was born Oct. 1, 1924, and lived most of his life, mourners lined the main street, some holding bouquets of flowers and wearing pins bearing images of the former president. He died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100.
Willie Browner, 75, described Carter as hailing from a bygone era of American politics.
(AP)
Read more on FRANCE 24 English
Read also:
Tributes pour in for Jimmy Carter as funeral set for January 9
World leaders pay tribute to former US president Jimmy Carter
Rosalynn Carter, former US first lady and mental health activist, dies at 96
