Americans wave goodbye to US president Jimmy Carter

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.