PLAINS, Ga. — The hometown of Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter is getting ready for Mrs. Carter’s funeral next week.
It will be a private funeral in Plains on Wednesday, Nov. 29, for family, close friends and neighbors.
The public is invited to line the streets for the motorcade as it proceeds from the church, down Bond Street, and along Hwy. 280 in Downtown Plains to the burial site at the Carters' home. The Carter Center said viewing areas will be designated.
Next Wednesday, the funeral procession is set to arrive at Maranatha Baptist Church shortly before 11 a.m. The motorcade will then depart around 12:30 p.m.
Meanwhile, the people of Plains are helping organize every detail.
One member of the Carters’ church is helping arrange for the music for the funeral—some of Mrs. Carter’s favorite songs.
A neighbor is helping with the flowers for her casket.
It is all out of the love for her that they share with Mr. Carter-- the whole town is mourning along with him.
Jan Williams, one of the Carters’ friends and one of the leaders of their church, Maranatha Baptist, is helping with the plans.
As she talked with 11Alive Tuesday, she closed her eyes, fighting back tears, thinking of the funeral— and the days and weeks after the funeral.
“The oncoming days for us will be caring about Mr. Jimmy,” Williams said. “I am sure that he is totally lost without her.”
Williams said she has not accepted yet that her dear friend “Ms. Rosalyn” is gone.
She still imagines that she is just up the street from downtown Plains and from the church where they visited and worshipped together and where they would ask each other about their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
It is the church where Mrs. Carter once started a food ministry for five families.
That ministry grew. Last Saturday, the church served more than 460 families.
“I think it will take weeks, months, whatever, to process that we don’t have her,” Williams said. “But she has left us such a wonderful map to follow about how to be the kind of people we need to be.”
Mrs. Carter would often visit the Plains Trading Post downtown, browse through all the political memorabilia for sale in the shop, and tell the owner, Philip Kurland, personal stories about the politicians on display there. She’d known many of them, going back decades.
She loved talking politics with Kurland.
Now, he loves telling stories about her helping even strangers she’d meet in the shop with just a word of encouragement.
“We’ve had people coming in here saying, ‘I met Rosalynn 16 years ago’ and a couple of words she told them changed their whole life,” Kurland said. “Or, ‘I was having a mental health crisis and something she did led me to find help.’ It’s just incredible that there are little acts of kindness that me or you might not even think about or even notice that have meant major differences. She’s always going to be alive in Plains, her spirit will always be alive here, and we all need to step up and do a little better and be a little kinder and take the torch and make a difference.”