Tribute service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter’s casket was carried out of Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church after her tribute service concluded following Pastor Tony Lowden’s benediction.

“She’s alive. She’s resting in the arms of Jesus. We ask that you comfort every person here today as her sons and daughters of the Secret Service take her back home to Plains,” he added.

Former President Jimmy Carter exited the church shortly after the casket and their motorcade has departed.

Rosalynn’s funeral is scheduled for Wednesday in Plains, Georgia.

If she was here today, Rosalynn Carter would be sure to thank the Secret Service agents who were with her and kept her safe for 46 years, the family’s personal pastor said at a tribute service for the former first lady on Tuesday.

During the procession on Monday, past and current members of Rosalynn’s Secret Service detail escorted the motorcade and the hearse at Pheobe Sumter Medical Center, the Carter Center said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Jason Carter speaks during a tribute service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter on Tuesday in Atlanta.

Rosalynn Carter was a lot of things — a grandmother, an adventurer, and someone with “unshakable strength,” her grandson, Jason Carter, said at a tribute service in her honor on Tuesday.

He said her life was a “testament to the power of faith and love,” pointing to her 77-year marriage to Jimmy Carter, who their grandson said “inspired the world.”

Despite her high-profile role in the White House, Jason said she was still a very normal grandmother.

“Almost all of her recipes call for mayonnaise, for example. We all got cards from her on our birthdays — $20 bill in it,” he said.

Jason also talked about a time when his grandmother took out a Tupperware of pimento cheese and bread on an airplane and made everyone sandwiches. He said that anecdote demonstrated how much she loved people, getting laughs from the crowd gathered in the church.

“She was a rock for our family,” but she was also an “adventurer, a voyager, a mountain climber.”

Jason said his grandmother had “unshakable strength and powerful faith.” He talked about how Rosalynn would open her heart up to people all over the country and to advocate fiercely for things that mattered to her and other Americans, including mental health.

Trisha Yearwood and Garth Brooks perform during a tribute service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter on Tuesday in Atlanta.

Country music superstar couple Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood performed John Lennon’s “Imagine” during Rosalynn Carter’s tribute service Tuesday.

Earlier this year, Brooks and Yearwood participated in Habitat for Humanity’s 37th Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project, picking up the hammer for the Carters.

Jason Carter, Rosalynn Carter’s grandson, paid tribute to his grandmother’s work as an advocate of mental health reform, noting that she was way ahead of her time when deciding to take on the issue.

“Her advocacy for mental health was a 50-year climb that is as remarkable as any other,” Jason said.

He said that his grandmother’s work had a large impact, including within the Carter family.

“And that effort changed lives and it saved lives, including in my own family,” he added.

Judy Woodruff pauses at the casket after speaking during a tribute service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter at Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta, on November 28.

Journalist Judy Woodruff described former how Rosalynn Carter changed the definition of what it meant to be the first lady.

The two first met in 1970 when Rosalynn was campaigning for Jimmy Carter’s gubernatorial campaign and Woodruff was a young reporter at an Atlanta television station. Woodruff covered the Carters both when Jimmy Carter was the governor and when he became the president.

“I know my respect and admiration for her goes back to the very beginning,” she said.

Woodruff talked about how Rosalynn would sit in on cabinet meetings and immersed herself in learning about subjects that mattered to her.

Woodruff talked about a diplomatic trip Rosalynn took to the Caribbean, Central and South America in the early months of the Carter administration. She wanted to bring back concerns to her husband, Woodruff said, especially ones revolving around human rights.

“I’ll never forget the looks on the faces of some of the Latin leaders as they realized that they were dealing with a serious, supremely well-informed and well-briefed representative of the president of the United States,” she said, as one of the journalists on the trip. “The person closer to him than anyone else. Criticism ahead of time that she would be dismissed melted away.”

James "Chip" Carter and Amy Carter hold hands near their father, former President Jimmy Carter, during a tribute service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter at Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta on November 28. 

Jimmy Carter, 99, is attending the tribute service for his wife, Rosalynn, but the former president isn’t able to speak — so their daughter, Amy Lynn Carter, read one of his love letters on his behalf.

“This is from a letter he wrote 75 years ago while he was serving in the Navy,” Amy said before reading this passage:

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus followed the reading with a performance of “Wondrous Love.”

Former president Jimmy Carter is seated in the first row with his sons, John William “Jack” Carter, James Earl “Chip” Carter III and Donnel Jeffrey “Jeff” Carter and his daughter, Amy Lynn Carter, during the tribute service for his wife.

Amy was seen holding her father’s hand during a performance of “Morning Has Broken” by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus.

The service honoring former first lady Rosalynn Carter is being held at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church.   

President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton joined the family in the first row along with former first ladies Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, Laura Bush and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter were married on July 7, 1946. Both were born and raised in Plains, Georgia. 

So close were Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, that it is jarring to see him without her.

The former president’s deeply poignant arrival in church a reclined wheelchair, just before his wife’s flower-covered casket, ends their common journey in life that lasted nearly 80 years.

They first met in the last summer of World War II. Carter, then a US Naval Academy student, told his mother after his first date with Eleanor Rosalynn Smith that, “she’s the girl I want to marry.”  

The couple, who decades later would become the longest-betrothed presidential couple in history, wed in 1946.

When he published his book “A Full Life” shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer in 2015, Carter contemplated his own mortality. He wrote that he was at peace with his accomplishments as president as well as his unrealized goals. He said he and Rosalynn were “blessed with good health and look to the future with eagerness and confidence, but are prepared for inevitable adversity when it comes.” 

Even the Carters couldn’t beat time and that adversity eventually came. And Carter, 99, who is himself receiving hospice care, will be left to face his final days without his partner in life and politics.

James "Chip" Carter speaks during a tribute service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter at Glenn Memorial Church at Emory University on Tuesday in Atlanta.

Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter’s son, James Earl “Chip” Carter III, welcomed the crowd who gathered at a church in Atlanta to honor the life of his mother by talking about how much she influenced him and his life.

He said Rosalynn was the “glue that held our family together through the ups and downs and thicks and thins of our family’s politics.”

He said she believed in her children and took care of them and credited his mother for getting him into rehab for his drug and alcohol addiction.

“She saved my life,” he said.

Carter III also talked about the impact Rosalynn had not only on the family but on Americans across the nation.

“She told me that when dad started running for president, that the thing that she enjoyed the most was the people that she met across the country,” he said, adding that when she was first lady, she tried to operate with her faith at the forefront.

The casket of former first lady Rosalynn Carter is carried into the Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church for a tribute service in Atlanta on Tuesday, November 28.

A tribute service honoring former first lady Rosalynn Carter has started at a church in Atlanta.

She lay in repose Monday evening at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta. On Tuesday morning before coming to the church, a departure ceremony took place at the Carter Presidential Center.

On the way to Atlanta on Monday, the former first lady’s motorcade made a few brief stops, including at her alma mater, Georgia Southwestern State University, where officials laid wreaths at a bronze statue dedicated to her.

Former President Jimmy Carter attends a tribute service for his wife former first lady Rosalynn Carter, at Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta, on Tuesday.

Former President Jimmy Carter has arrived at the tribute service of his wife, Rosalynn Carter.

People have gathered at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church at Emory University in Atlanta for the observation. President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden and former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are also in attendance. They are seated in the front row of the church.

Jimmy Carter, who is 99 and receiving hospice care at home, had been expected to attend the memorial. He is “very physically diminished” and plans to stay throughout but won’t deliver any remarks, his grandson Jason Carter said.

“But we all know that he wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he added.

The Carters were married for more than 77 years.

Former President Jimmy Carter’s brief return to the spotlight Tuesday for his wife’s tribute service comes at a moment when the bedrock of his international legacy is standing solid in a time of crisis.

Carter was the architect of the Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt – the first peace deal between the Jewish state and one of its Arab enemies. 

The Carters had long been deeply interested in the Middle East even before the presidency. In his book “The Blood of Abraham,” the former president wrote how he and Rosalynn became drawn to the region through Bible study and pored over maps and history books before inspecting Christian holy sites in a Mercedes station wagon during a visit to Israeli Prime Minster Golda Meir in 1973 when he was the governor of Georgia.

The Camp David agreement, signed by Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1978, called for a formal peace between the foes and the establishment of diplomatic relations. It resulted in the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula and called for an Israeli exit from the West Bank and Gaza. 

The agreement has often been referenced since the eruption of the war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza. That’s because it emerged in a window for peace following another conflict – the Yom Kippur War of 1973 between Israel and Egypt and Syria. The hope now is that once the fighting ends in Gaza, a similar moment may exist for forging a final status peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Such dreams may be elusive. But the Middle East would be far worse off now as another war rages but for Carter’s work nearly 50 years ago.

Former presidents and first ladies occasionally hitch a ride on Air Force One for some national and international events, as the Clintons and former first lady Michelle Obama did on Tuesday.

The group is attending a memorial service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter on Tuesday in Atlanta.

Former President George W. Bush, his wife Laura and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, also a former first lady, accompanied then-President Barack Obama on the flight to South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s funeral in 2013, for example.

Former President Jimmy Carter himself was one of four presidents aboard the presidential jet headed to the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan in 1999. He was the guest of then-sitting President Bill Clinton and ex-presidents George Bush and Gerald Ford were also on board.

In 2016, Bill Clinton seemed to forget for one moment that he wasn’t the big guy anymore when the then-commander-in-chief appeared at the door of his plane and hollered to his Democratic predecessor to get on board at the Tel Aviv Airport after the funeral of former Israeli Prime Minister and President Shimon Peres 

“Bill! Let’s go. Let’s go home,” Obama said, with a grin directed towards his fellow two-termer, who was notoriously late for everything.

A military honor guard carries the casket of former first lady Rosalynn Carter from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 28, en route for an afternoon tribute service at Glenn Memorial Church at Emory University.

A private tribute service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter will take place Tuesday at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church at the Emory University campus in Atlanta, Georiga.

The service will be exactly what she envisioned, her grandson Jason Carter told CNN, adding that she designed the program herself.

She died peacefully in her Plains home on November 19, at the age of 96, two days after the Carter Center announced she was entering hospice care at home. In May, the Carter Center said she had dementia.

Rosalynn Carter and her husband, former US President Jimmy Carter, returned home to Plains — located about 120 miles south of Atlanta — after leaving the White House in 1981 and had lived there since. Jimmy Carter, who is 99, began receiving home hospice care in February, after a series of hospital stays.

People from across the state — and across the country — have made their way to the area in the past week to celebrate Rosalynn Carter’s life and legacy as the town of several hundred prepared to say goodbye.

Who is expected to attend: Jason Carter previously told CNN his grandfather, Jimmy Carter, is planning on traveling to Atlanta for the memorial service.

Other invited guests include President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and the second gentleman.

Former President Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton along with former first ladies, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump are also expected to attend, according to a statement from the Carter Center. 

Artists Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood are scheduled to perform at the service. Members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will play songs beloved by Rosalynn Carter. 

Members of the Carter family including Mrs. Carter’s son Chip and daughter Amy will take part in the service. The Carter’s personal pastor, Tony Lowden, will deliver opening remarks.

Before her private funeral service on Wednesday morning, members of the public are getting a chance to pay their respects and celebrate former first lady Rosalynn Carter’s life and legacy.

Carter’s motorcade left her hometown of Plains, Georgia, on Monday, stopping for various ceremonies on the way to Atlanta, where a repose service was held at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.

A private tribute ceremony will be held Tuesday in Atlanta, with invited guests that include President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden; Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff; former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and former first ladies Melania Trump, Michelle Obama and Laura Bush.

Wednesday’s funeral service, for family and invited friends, will be held in Plains at the Carters’ beloved Maranatha Baptist Church.

See what mourners said about the late Rosalynn Carter:

Members of the public pay their respects to former first lady Rosalynn Carter as she lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta on Monday, November 27. 

Atlanta resident Shannon Boone was among those attending Monday's repose service for the former first lady. "She did a lot of amazing work with mental illness and helping international communities," Boone said. "She was just a very genuine, kind woman who used her platform to make the world a better place."

"We all have somebody in our lives who may have challenges around mental health, and I think she changed our thinking about these matters and the dialogue," said Vincent Wimbush, who was among those in Atlanta to pay their respects. Wimbush grew up in Atlanta and attended Morehouse College, and he remembers when the former president spoke at the college's commencement. "They were both just gentle spirits, and the way they talked honestly about matters relating to equality, racial justice and the like, I just always appreciated them for their forthrightness about the issues and coming to terms with these issues themselves." 

TV journalists report from outside the Carter Center in Atlanta on Monday. 

Atlanta resident Vickye Terry paid her respects on Monday and stopped to talk about the former first lady. "She stood by her husband. She stood by the president. She represented him well," Terry said. "Her heart was as big as his." 

Chicago native Dora Moore said she has admired the Carters ever since they were in the White House. "When I heard that Mrs. Carter had passed away, I just wanted to be here, be part of the crowd and walk through the Center. ... She was just an admirable person in every way. As first lady, as a wife, mother, grandmother. She was soft-spoken, and yet she was a very strong person. I felt each time I saw her — not necessarily in person — she just seemed to be stronger and stronger as her life went on and someone that I looked up to." 

Flowers are left for the former first lady outside the Carter Presidential Center on Monday. 

The the casket of Rosalynn Carter is placed in a motorcade on Tuesday.

The motorcade carrying the casket of Rosalynn Carter departed the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta.

The hearse will make the short drive to Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church at Emory University for an invitation-only tribute service scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. ET.

Members of the public last night paid their respects as she laid in repose at the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum.

A guest looks at the program before a tribute service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter at Glenn Memorial Church at Emory University on Tuesday in Atlanta.

The grandson of former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter told CNN his grandfather will not deliver any remarks during today’s tribute service for his grandmother but plans to attend the entire event.

“He really can’t do that, physically,” Jason Carter said with regards to his grandfather speaking at the event. “He plans to stay throughout. But he is very physically diminished.”

Carter also told CNN that his grandmother envisioned exactly what today’s tribute service would look like and designed the program before she died.

“We are doing exactly what she wanted at the service,” Carter said. “She would have been amazed and gratified by the outpouring of love and support.” 

Guests arrive before a tribute service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter at Glenn Memorial Church at Emory University on November 28 in Atlanta.

A line of chartered Emory University buses for invited guests have started to arrive at Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta for today’s tribute service for Rosalynn Carter, according to an invited guest and close friend of the Carters who would prefer not to be named.

Guests were shuttled to a security checkpoint near the church, then directed to their seats.

Former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young has arrived at the church, which is filled with people sitting and mingling.

Former first lady Melania Trump is expected to make a rare public appearance Tuesday as an attendee of the tribute service for Rosalynn Carter in Georgia.

The appearance will mark Trump stepping into a more traditional former first lady role, as she joins current first lady Jill Biden and former first ladies Michelle Obama, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton to pay tribute to Carter. It is common for sitting and former first ladies to attend the funerals of former first ladies.

Former President Jimmy Carter, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, second gentleman Doug Emhoff and former President Bill Clinton are also expected to attend Carter’s service.

Three former presidents are not expected to attend: Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

Melania Trump has largely avoided the public eye since leaving Washington in January 2021, even as her husband pursues another campaign to return to the White House. A source close to the former first lady told CNN most of her focus remains on their son, Barron, who is expected to graduate high school in Florida next year.

While Trump attended her husband’s presidential announcement last November, she has not joined him for any other public campaign events or his multiple court appearances. Still, sources familiar with their relationship tell CNN she supports her husband’s decision to run for president.

Read more about her appearance here.