National funeral service, flyover and 39 bells for Carter sendoff

AFP | Plains

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Mourners are to begin paying their respects to Jimmy Carter yesterday, kicking off a carefully choreographed sixday farewell for America’s longest-lived president.

Flags have been flying at halfmast around the country since Carter died on December 29 at the age of 100 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.

Carter’s state funeral officially begins on Saturday with Secret Service agents from his current and former protective detail carrying his casket to a hearse for a tour through Plains.

The motorcade bearing his remains is to pause at Carter’s boyhood family peanut farm while a farm bell rings 39 times in honor of America’s 39th president.

His body will then be taken to Atlanta for a brief stop at the Georgia Capitol, where Carter served as a state senator before becoming governor, and a moment of silence.

From there, Carter will be escorted to the Carter Presidential Center where he will lie in repose from 7:00 pm on Saturday (0000 GMT Sunday) to 6:00 am (1100 GMT) on Tuesday to allow the public to pay their respects.

Carter’s remains will be flown on Tuesday morning from a military base in Georgia to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington on a US Air Force plane dubbed Special Air Mission 39.

A motorcade will then transport the body of the former commander-in-chief to the US Navy Memorial.

Carter, who attended the US Naval Academy, graduating in 1946, and served on submarines, will be transferred from a hearse to a horse-drawn caisson for a funeral procession to the US Capitol.

Military pall bearers will carry his flag-draped casket to the rotunda of the Capitol where his body will lie in state until 7:00 am (1200 GMT) on Thursday surrounded by a guard of honor of service members.

Carter will be the 13th former US president to lie in state in the Capitol.

Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in 1865, was the first. Former US President Jimmy Carter (C) waves after meeting 22 September 1990 in Port-auPrince with authorities about t h e u p coming election in Haiti.

All four living former presidents -- Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump -- are expected to attend. President Joe Biden is to deliver the eulogy for his fellow Democrat, who served in the White House from 1977 to 1981.