Americans wave goodbye to US president Jimmy Carter

Americans have been gathering to remember Jimmy Carter as a nearly week-long state funeral gets under way for the 39th US president.

Saturday’s procession from Carter’s home in Plains, Georgia, to Atlanta marked the beginning of the six-day public goodbye for the statesman, who passed away last month aged 100.

Carter will be flown to Washington DC on Tuesday where he will lie in state at the US Capitol before a service on Thursday that will feature remarks from former American presidents.

Mourners from the state of Georgia and around the world have gathered in Atlanta to pay their respects.

Among those who came on Saturday was Heather Brooks, an Atlanta resident and “great admirer” of the Democrat.

“[I] found him to be always kind, relatable, just an awesome individual who has done so much for the world, not just America,” Ms Brooks told the BBC.

She said she had met Carter a handful of times and described him as “powerful yet so humble”.

High school student Ethan Cyganiewicz’s family drove five hours overnight, arriving in Atlanta at four in the morning on Sunday. He described the gravity he felt while paying his respects to President Carter.

“You just feel the majesty of the moment. You’re like in the presence of a man who sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. It surely is something,” the 15-year-old told the BBC.

Ethan said he thought Carter was “average” as president, but valued his humanitarian work and humility.

“He was the last president that actually cared about the American people,” Ethan said.

Paige Alexander, the head of the Carter Center, told the BBC that the ex-president should be remembered for his “sincerity and integrity”.

“I mean, at the end of the day, you have a politician who would say during a debate, you know, ‘the Honourable President [Gerald] Ford and I disagree on these issues’,” Ms Alexander said. “You don’t hear that now.”

The grassy area outside the Carter Center has been overflowing with flowers, handwritten tributes and bags of peanuts, a reference to Carter’s early years as a peanut farmer in Plains.

Those who knew the former president well, like Jill Stuckey, a long-time friend of the Carter family, said she will miss his – and his wife Rosalynn’s – commitment to helping others.

That’s something Ms Stuckey said the couple was committed to “until the day they passed”.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get used to a world without President Carter,” she told the BBC.

On Saturday the motorcade passed 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, who died in late 2023 aged 96.

The procession also stopped in front of Carter’s boyhood home and family farm just outside Plains. The site is now part of Jimmy Carter National Historical Park, which rang the old farm bell on Saturday 39 times to honour the 39th president.

The motorcade then stopped at the Georgia state capitol building for a moment of silence led by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.

Mourners will be able to visit Carter at the presidential library on 5 January and 6 January before he is flown to Washington DC on 7 January.

For two days he will lie in state at the US Capitol Rotunda, where the public will be able to pay their respects.

His life will be commemorated at Washington National Cathedral on 9 January in a service attended by several former presidents.

On top of the political praise Carter is expected to receive in the coming days will be the personal tributes from his extended family.

For Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, it is the personal connection he had with people that he will especially miss.

“I think for many people in the country he was a beacon of love and respect and I think that’s worth celebrating,” the former Georgia state senator told the BBC.