Walter Mondale wrote a eulogy for Jimmy Carter. His son read it at the funeral

Walter Mondale wrote a eulogy for Jimmy Carter 10 years ago. On Thursday, his son read it at the state funeral service for Carter at the Washington National Cathedral.

Ted Mondale was a young adult when his father became Carter’s vice president. He said the two men had a deep relationship and friendship that lasted long after their time in office.

Carter “came out to Minnesota for my dad’s 90th birthday,” Mondale told MPR News host Tom Crann. “When a 93-year-old from South Georgia comes to Minnesota on January 5th — that’s a friend.”

Ahead of the service, Ted Mondale said his role would be focused on delivering his father’s words. He will not be sharing his personal reflections.

But he did share that he will remember Carter as a “very nice man.”

“That’s rare for somebody of that importance, under that amount of stress to actually care about human beings in the way that Carter did.”

To hear more of the interview with Ted Mondale, use the audio player above or read the transcript below, which has been lightly edited for clarity.

Tell me how you’re feeling as you prepare to read this eulogy.

Well, this is a tremendous honor for me personally, but it really reflects the end of a relationship between two great men: President Carter and my father.

It’s a sad time and I think it's probably a good time to reflect on how they operated together and as a whole.

Tell me how this eulogy came about. I understand it was written about 10 years ago by your father, who passed away back in 2021. Was he asked by Jimmy Carter to do this? Was that the plan?

Yes, as I understand it, President Carter contracted brain cancer in 2015. And they asked [my father] to write a eulogy to give at his potential funeral, which they thought would be soon. Of course, it turned out to be 10 years later.

So, the original draft of this was drafted in 2015 and it was clearly updated by my dad over time. Frankly, we never talked about it. So, I received a call from the Carter Center folks saying, “Hey, by the way, we'd like you to come give this eulogy that your dad wrote that we have right here.”

Your dad knew Carter in a way that very few people did. As you read through this eulogy, what are you learning about your dad and Jimmy Carter’s relationship?

Well, I think — and the eulogy states this — is that the relationship was very deep. It was very personable. It was very good. And, you know, my my dad saw what Hubert Humphrey, his mentor went through with Lyndon Johnson, you know, making him ride a horse and not giving him any responsibilities and really humiliating him. And there was an understanding between the two that my, my father wouldn't be interested in that kind of vice presidency. And apparently Carter had thought through what a modern vice presidency would look like. They agreed, and they went on from there.

I would say also, and it's in the eulogy, my dad reflects that, you know, in many ways they grew up the same way. They were both from very small towns. My father was a preacher's kid. Carter was from a family and was a person of deep, deep faith. And it was really that sort of rural background and a deep shared core value of religious faith that created a relationship, one of the most difficult there are that worked, that they understood each other, they could figure out how to work together. But it was really my father believes it was because of growing up in similar backgrounds and being from similar places in life.

What’s your favorite part of this eulogy?

Well, I think that two parts that I find most moving, other than the personal piece, is he talks about Carter being a visionary. You know, in the early 19 — in the 1970s nobody was talking about climate change, nobody was thinking about climate change. And here you had a president of the United States that really went staked his presidency on trying to do something about it, on energy conservation, on alternatives, on deregulating oil and gas production, and it actually led to a 10% reduction of overall, any energy usage in the United States from 1979 to 1983.

That is visionary, that is putting oneself and immediate political needs ahead, behind what the — what would help the country the most over the long run. I think that's moving. He also did an incredible amount for women's rights. He, you know, extended the ability to get the era passed. He appointed women to be the secretaries of commerce, HUD, HEW and HHS, he appointed more women to the federal judiciary than five times the amount of all the other previous presidents combined, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and I find that somehow did not know that, and it's compelling and really tells a story about these values that drove Carter and that administration at that time.

Will you be sharing any of your own memories, or is it strictly your father’s?

I’m a hologram. I've not been asked to reflect on my life or my feelings or anything. I am trying to give the words of my father to his family and the whole cathedral and much of the world.

Then I want to give you a chance to share your reflections. What memories do you have of Jimmy Carter when you first met him?

I would say that, you know, for Carter himself, he always took time out to come over and say hi and really inquire us of what we were doing, what we were thinking, what's going on in your life. You love to talk baseball, big Braves fan. And you know that's rare for somebody of that importance, under that amount of stress, to actually care about human beings in a way that Carter did. He was a very, very nice man. You know, he came out to Minnesota for my dad's 90th birthday, which when a 93 year old from South Georgia comes to Minnesota on January 5, that's a friend. But he went on, they were joking around. It was really great footage, but he was joking around about my mom saying, Oh, my God, she would call all the time, and we had to get this funding, and this had to go through. He said, I think I spent more time with Joan Mondale on public art funding than I did on foreign policy.

Transcript of Ted Mondale’s eulogy for Jimmy Carter

My father wrote this in 2015 and clearly he edited it a couple times since then. But here we go. 

Today, we join in sadness to honor our dear friend, President Carter, for his extraordinary years of principled and decent leadership and his courageous commitment to civil rights and human rights. I remember the emergence of Jimmy Carter on the national stage, in particular his 1971 inaugural address. For the first time, a Georgia governor called for a commitment to the traditions of Martin Luther King Jr., and for the decency that his leadership stood for over his lifetime.  

I was surprised when then-candidate Carter asked me to join him as his running mate in 1976. He amazed me then, as he has every year since. He, of course, was brilliant. He also had a great sense of humor. And while we had only four years in the White House, he achieved so much in that time. It stood as a marker for Americans dedicated to justice and decency. Carter was a man of his word.  

I remember when he talked about the concept of the vice presidency. I told him I'd like to do it and had only two requests. I wanted to make a real contribution and I didn't want to be embarrassed, as many of my predecessors have. He agreed, welcomed my full participation and directed his staff to treat me as they would him. He was very careful to protect me from the frustration and too often humiliation had cursed the lives of many vice presidents. 

I want to thank the president for the good choices he made with his key personnel. We don't have time to mention many of them, but Stu Eizenstat comes as close as possible to rivaling President Carter's formidable work ethic. Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell were blessings every day, to me, to the president and to the nation. 

One of the things that dawned on me during the course of our time together is how well we worked together and how we understood each other. I think one of the realities was that Carter was a devout Christian who grew up in a small town and was active in his faith for almost every moment of his life. I was also a small-town kid who grew up in a Methodist Church where my dad was a preacher, and our faith was core to me as Carter's faith was core to him. That common commitment to our faith created a bond between us that allowed us to understand each other and find ways to work together. 

He allowed me to take a leadership role on issues that never would have happened before. For instance, he directed and trusted me to take a central role in trying to bring decency to the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian boat people who were fleeing their country. With President Carter's orders, the boat people were picked up by our great Navy from their flimsy boats, which were capsizing, and taken to safety. Most became good American citizens working for a healthy and prosperous nation. 

Joan loved her time as a second lady, and we have Jimmy and Rosalynn to thank for helping her champion the public arts and for just being so kind to her. These were good years for Joan and I. President Carter and I became very close friends. We often spent hours together throughout the day. We were working on real problems, not wasting time. 

The personal relationship we established while in office continued throughout our life. Carter was farsighted. He put aside his short-term political interests to tackle challenges that demanded sacrifice to protect our kids and grandkids from future harm. Very few people in the 1970s had heard the term climate change, yet Carter put his presidency on the line to pass laws to conserve energy, deregulate new oil and gas prices and invest in clean renewable alternatives to fossil fuels. It wasn't a perfect program, but thanks to President Carter, U.S. energy consumption declined by 10 percent between 1979 and 1983. In many ways, he laid the foundation for future presidents to come to grips with climate change. Some thought he was crazy to fight so hard to pass these laws, but he was dead right and we know that now. 

We also know that President Carter elevated human rights to the top of his agenda. Sometimes we forget how seriously he pursued, he pushed to advance the rights of women. He proposed and signed the law extending the period for states to approve the Equal Rights Amendment. He appointed women to head the departments of Commerce, Education, HUD and what is now HEW. Women on his White House staff played crucial roles in developing his highest-priority energy and environmental proposals, and he dramatically increased the ranks of female circuit and district court judges, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In all, he appointed five times as many women to the federal bench as all of the previous presidents had from the beginning of our country.  

Two decades ago, President Carter said he believed income inequality was the biggest global issue. More recently, in a 2018 commencement address at Liberty University, he said, ‘I think now the largest global issue is the discrimination against women and girls in this world.’ He concluded that until stubborn attitudes that foster discrimination against women change, the world cannot advance, and poverty and income equality cannot be solved.  

Towards the end of our time in the White House, the President and I were talking about how we might describe what we tried to accomplish in office, we came up with a sentence which remains an important summary of our work. We told the truth, we obeyed the law and we kept the peace. That we did, Mr. President. I will always be proud and grateful to have had the chance to work with you towards noble ends. It was then and will always be the most rewarding experience of my public career.

Thank you. 

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