ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter’s hometown of Plains is preparing to say goodbye to its favorite son.
The memorial week following the president’s death will begin there this weekend and end there next week.
Workers were out early on a foggy Tuesday morning setting up specialized tents along the route of Carter’s funeral procession will take place Saturday and end at Maranatha Baptist Church.
The procession will head from the hospital in Americus right through downtown Plains before pausing at Carter’s boyhood home.
“It’s so bittersweet. He was ready to go,” said Jimmy Carter National Park Superintendent Jill Stuckey.
She told Channel 2’s Richard Elliot that she will be there with her rangers to say goodbye on Saturday. She’s also a longtime friend of the Carter family.
“What a great honor for the park and all the employees here. We’re going to be standing out there and saluting our hero,” Stuckey said.
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Mary Moncus’ Buffaloes Café sits right in the center of downtown Plains and right on the funeral route.
“There are small towns all over the south that are dying, and this is not one of those towns, and it’s largely because of his legacy,” Moncus said.
The restaurant is actually owned by the Friends of Jimmy Carter Foundation and was always one of the former president’s favorite places to eat.
While he hadn’t been able to come by in recent years, folks would stop and get him a chicken salad or pimento cheese sandwich and bring it back to his house.
Moncus said the world will seem different now that he’s not in it.
“We appreciate everything that he has done, and we just, we want to present Plains in the best light to make sure that we’re showing the world what kind of place he came from and what formed him,” Moncus said.
The funeral will begin coming through Plains this weekend then head to Atlanta before going on to Washington, DC.
Then they’ll go back to Plains for the final funeral and interment.
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