WASHINGTON − Former President Jimmy Carter’s youngest child and only daughter was among those gathered in Washington Tuesday to honor her father on the highest national stage.
Amy Carter, 57, sat with her older brothers − Jack, Chip and Jeff − and other members of the Carter family inside the Capitol rotunda, as members of Congress and other leaders paid their respects to the late 39th president .
Carter’s casket was brought to ornate hall on Capitol Hill via a horse-drawn caisson . The funeral procession down the Washington streets was meant to mirror his inaugural parade in 1977, when Carter and his wife Rosalynn walked on foot from the Capitol to the White House. Amy Carter, then 9, joined her parents for a portion of the journey.
Amy Carter quickly became an object public fascination during her father’s presidency. From dining with movie stars to roller skating with friends on the south lawn, her life as a child in the White House − the first since John F. Kennedy’s Camelot more than a decade earlier − was well documented.