The nation pauses to honor Jimmy Carter for his service as a naval officer, governor and president, and his four decades of humanitarian work after leaving the White House.

University of Minnesota Professor Larry Jacobs, who worked closely with Mondale, spoke with MPR News guest host Emily Reese about Mondale and Carter’s relationship.

Just after the nation celebrated its bicentennial, Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer and former governor of Georgia, chose Minnesotan Walter Mondale as his vice presidential running mate. (Kent Kobersteen/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

In his eulogy, Walter Mondale praised Carter for making human rights the linchpin of his foreign policy, for promoting environmental measures and for placing more women in high office than his predecessors, according to the newspaper. That included appointing future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an appeals judge.

GOLDEN VALLEY, MINN. – The son of former Vice President Walter Mondale will speak Thursday at the funeral for President Jimmy Carter. Ted Mondale says he will deliver a eulogy for President Carter that was written by his father nearly a decade ago. The Carter Center asked Ted to represent the Mondale family at the state funeral.

The world is reflecting on former President Jimmy Carter’s legacy after he passed away on Sunday, Dec. 29, at 100 years old.

Jimmy Carter, who considered himself an outsider even as he sat in the Oval Office as the 39th U.S. president, will be honored Thursday with the pageantry of a funeral at Washington National Cathedral before a second service and burial in his tiny Georgia hometown.

As 39th president, Carter appointed several Minnesotans, including Bob Bergland, of Roseau, as secretary of agriculture.

Ted was already a young adult by the time his father, Walter Mondale, became the Vice President to President Jimmy Carter in 1977. "These were very good years, and these are very good people," Ted said. Through those four years in the White House, Ted says one thing remained a constant – the care that President Carter showed.

Before Walter Mondale died in 2021, he wrote a eulogy for Jimmy Carter, who outlived the former vice president from Minnesota.

My experience with the Carter/Mondale administration played a pivotal role in my own public and private sector career, especially here in Virginia, for which I’m eternally grateful.