![]() |
![]()
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024) was the 39th president of the United States, serving from 1977 to 1981. / Photo via U.S. Embassy.
|
|||
Published
on Monday, January 6,
2025
By
the A.M. Costa Rica
staff and wire services
The
U.S. Embassy and Consular Section will be
closed on Thursday, Jan.
9, 2025, to honor
former President Jimmy Carter, who died
Sunday, Dec.
29,
2024.
U.S.
President Joe Biden issued an executive
order directing all U.S. federal
government departments and agencies to
close in honor of the 39th president of
the United States.
According
to the embassy, all
previously scheduled consular appointments
will be rescheduled.
The
U.S. Embassy,
located in
the Pavas Canton of San José, will
reopen on
Friday, Jan.
10,
with regular office hours from 7:30 a.m.
to 2 p.m.
American
citizens requiring emergency consular
services should call (506) 2519-2000 or
011-506-2519-2000 from the United States, or
email ACSSanJose@state.gov.
Carter,
then governor of Georgia, visited Costa
Rica in 1972 as
part of his efforts to
promote dialogue between anti-democratic
groups and Latin American governments.
Six
days of funeral observances for former
President Carter began Saturday in
Georgia, where he died, according
to a report published by Voice of
America Journal (VOA).
The
first events reflected Carter's climb up
the political ladder,
from the tiny town of Plains, Georgia, to
decades on the global stage as a
humanitarian and advocate for democracy.
The
start honors Carter's deep roots in rural
south Georgia. The proceedings began at
10:15 a.m. local time Saturday with the
Carter family arriving at Phoebe Sumter
Medical Center in Americus.
Former
Secret Service agents who protected Carter
served as pallbearers, walking alongside
the hearse as it exited the campus on its
way to Plains.
James
Earl Carter Jr. lived more than 80 of his
100 years in and around the town, which
still has fewer than 700 people, not much
more than when he was born on Oct.
1, 1924. Some other
modern presidents, Richard Nixon, Ronald
Reagan and Bill Clinton also grew up in
small-town settings but
Carter stands out for returning and
remaining in his birthplace for his long
post-presidency.
The
motorcade moved through downtown Plains,
which spans just a few blocks, passing
near the girlhood home of former first
lady Rosalynn Smith Carter, who died in
November 2023 at the age of 96, and near
where the couple operated the family
peanut warehouses.
The
motorcade passed by the Methodist church
where the Carters married in 1946, and
the home where they lived and died. The
former president will be buried there
alongside Rosalynn.
The
Carters built the one-story house, now
surrounded by Secret Service fencing,
before his first state Senate campaign in
1962 and lived out their lives there with
the exception of four years in the
Governor's Mansion and four more in the
White House.
After
going through Plains, the procession
stopped in front of Carter's family farm
and boyhood home in Archery, just outside
the town, after passing the cemetery where
the former president's parents, James Earl
Carter Sr. and Lillian Carter, are buried.
The
farm now is part of the Jimmy Carter
National Historical Park. The National
Park Service rang the old farm bell 39
times to honor the 39th president.
Carter
was the first president born in a
hospital. But the home had no electricity
or running water when he was born, and he
worked his father's land during the Great
Depression. Still, the Carters had
relative privilege and status. Earl
employed Black tenant farming families.
The elder Carter also owned a store in
Plains and was a local civic and political
leader. Lillian was a nurse and she
delivered Rosalynn. The property still
includes a tennis court Earl had built for
the family.
It
was Earl's death in 1953 that set Jimmy on
course toward the Oval Office. The younger
Carters had left Plains after he graduated
from the U.S. Naval Academy. But Jimmy
abandoned a promising career as a
submarine officer and early participant in
the Pentagon's nuclear program to take
over the family's peanut business after
his father's death. Within a decade, he was
elected to
the Georgia State Senate.
From
Archery, the motorcade headed north to
Atlanta. The military-run motorcade
stopped outside the Georgia Capitol, where
Carter served as a state senator from
1963-67 and governor from 1971-75. Georgia
Gov. Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Andre
Dickens led a moment of silence. While
former governors are honored with
state-run funerals, presidents, even if
they served as governors, are memorialized
with national rites run by the federal
government.
The
motorcade then proceeded to the Carter
Presidential Center, which includes
Carter's presidential library and The
Carter Center, established by the former
president and first lady in 1982. Carter's
son, James Earl "Chip" Carter III, and his
grandson, Jason Carter, spoke to an
assembly that included many Carter Center
employees whose work concentrating on
international diplomacy and mediation,
election monitoring, and fighting disease
in the developing world continues to set a
standard for what former presidents can
accomplish.
Jimmy
Carter, who delivered the center's annual
reports until 2019, won the 2002 Nobel
Peace Prize in part for this
post-presidential work.
Carter
was scheduled to
lie in repose from 7 p.m. Saturday to 6
a.m. Tuesday, with the public able to pay
respects around the clock.
Carter's
remains will travel next to Washington,
where he will lie in state in the Capitol
Rotunda until his funeral at 10 a.m.
Thursday at the Washington National
Cathedral. All the living presidents have
been invited,
and Joe Biden, a Carter ally, will deliver
a eulogy. Biden also signed a bill to name
a U.S. Postal Service facility in Plains
after Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.
The
Carter family then will return to bury its
patriarch in Plains after a private
hometown funeral at 3:45 p.m. at Maranatha
Baptist Church, where Carter, a devout
evangelical, taught Sunday School for
decades.
Carter will be buried afterward in a private graveside service, in a plot visible from the front porch of his home.
---------------
Professional's services and business U.S. Income
Tax & Accounting
![]() Nonprofit Organizations
![]() Car Rental
Sports
Academy
Dental Services
![]() |
![]() |