Lance Green was just a boy eating breakfast with his Georgia State trooper father about 1974 when Lance met a man with a big smile.
The man, Green recalled, “waves me over and says, ‘Come here.’ I just thought it was a nice guy who wanted me to sit there and have breakfast with him. It wasn’t until after we were done that my father said, ‘Do you know who that was?'”
Just a couple of years later, the entire world knew who that man was – President Jimmy Carter.
And now Green, who himself retired from the Georgia State Patrol just last October as a lieutenant, was given permission to don his uniform one last time to be part of the GSP funeral detail that stopped briefly Saturday afternoon at the Georgia state capitol.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Atlanta Mayor Andrew Dickens and their spouses joined 90 state legislators, three former governors and three state supreme court justices on the capitol steps facing Washington Street in a moment of silence.
Small groups of bystanders gathered at nearby streetcorners to catch a glimpse of the funeral cortege on its way to the nonprofit Carter Center two miles away.
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Carter blazed his path to the White House through Atlanta, where he was a state senator and later Georgia’s 76th governor.
State Rep. Bill Hitchens, R-Rincon, also served in the Georgia State Patrol as part of Gov. Carter’s security detail.
When Carter began his campaign for president, “all the troopers were traveling all over the country with him, so they called me back to be in charge of the governor’s mansion for the last three months,” Hitchens said.
Jan 4, 2025; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Georgia State Representatives Bill Hitchens (left) and Matt Reeve (right) point to their Peanut Brigade pins after Georgia State Capitol Pause for 39th President Jimmy CarterÕs funeral procession.
Hitchens remembers Carter much as Green does.
“He was very congenial. He was easy to talk to. He liked people,” he said. “He liked to talk to people he didn’t know, and didn’t know who he was when he was governor. But he was always a man of faith, and he had a special place in his heart for people who were downtrodden.”
Some things have changed and others have stayed the same in the Georgia Senate chamber since Jimmy Carter served there in the 1960s. Yellows and golds cover the wall now, from refurbishments in the 1970s and ’80s. Before that it would’ve been in shades of blue.
And though we know where Carter sat in the Senate – a third-row end seat on the speaker’s left – the exact desk isn’t known. The desks have been used since 1889, but have been moved several times.
Jimmy Carter, who served as Georgia’s 76th governor from 1971 to 1975 started the tradition of signing the inside of the middle drawer of the governor’s desk.
Jimmy Carter left marks figuratively and literally in office while he was Georgia’s governor. Carter started the tradition, upheld by every executive since, of signing the inside of the middle drawer of the governor’s desk. Carter’s is the only signature in pencil.
After leaving the Capitol the former president’s remains were taken to the Carter Presidential Center for a 4 p.m. private service, after which they lie in repose, beginning at 6 p.m., as the public was invited to pay tribute.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Carter funeral cortege passes Georgia capitol building, state leaders