Ted Mondale to deliver a eulogy written by his father for President Jimmy Carter

When former President Jimmy Carter was diagnosed with brain cancer almost a decade ago, he asked Walter Mondale, his vice president and lifelong friend, to write a eulogy for his funeral.

But as fate would have it, Carter outlived the Minnesotan, who died in 2021. Yet the eulogy penned by Mondale will still be read at Carter's funeral on Thursday — by Mondale's eldest son, Ted.

As it turned out, Ted Mondale didn't have any idea the heartfelt eulogy existed until after Carter died on Dec. 29. On Thursday, he will read his father's words at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

"It's a tremendous honor," he said Wednesday. "I take it very seriously."

Mondale found his father's work "very timely and well thought out." It touches on Carter's devotion to human, women's and environmental rights. And it is an ode to two men who governed as equals rather than elder and subordinate, creating a model for future presidents and vice presidents.

In the eulogy, the elder Mondale said he accepted Carter's invitation to run as vice president with two conditions: "I wanted to make a real contribution and didn't want to be embarrassed or humiliated as many of my predecessors had been in office." Carter readily agreed, embracing a true partnership.

"If you had to summarize it, it's about a president and a vice president who actually got along and were very close friends," Ted Mondale said. "They maintained that friendship throughout the rest of their lives."

He recalls the 93-year-old Carter visiting Minnesota for his father's 90th birthday. "Coming from Georgia to Minnesota in January, well, that's a friend you can count on," he said.

In his eulogy, Walter Mondale said the relationship didn't "blow up" because the two men hailed from small towns and relied on a "commitment to faith," a commonality that bound them together.

Ted Mondale said it was obvious his father had updated the eulogy over the years.

In one section, the elder Mondale recalled playing a central role in relocating Vietnamese and Southeast Asian boat people who were fleeing their countries. Many became U.S. citizens "working for a healthy and prosperous nation.

"Compare this to how we are tragically dealing with the crisis of immigrants today," he wrote.

Mondale also touched on Carter's pledge to mitigate climate change, a phrase unheard of in the 1970s. During his brief tenure, he championed laws to conserve energy and invest in clean alternatives to fossil fuels.

Even today, Ted Mondale finds that commitment astounding.

"He was a president who was willing to stake a good amount of political capital and ask Americans to sacrifice for climate change, something most Americans didn't understand was a risk at the time," he said.

Walter Mondale also wrote of Carter's belief that human rights should be a cornerstone of foreign policy and that, until discrimination against women is shattered, "the world cannot advance." To that, he penned, "Amen!"

When Mondale ran for president in 1984, he made history when he chose Geraldine Ferraro as a running mate, the nation's first woman vice presidential nominee.

Ted Mondale, who was 19 when Carter and his father were elected, would later become an attorney who served in the Minnesota Senate, and chair of the Metropolitan Council and the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission.

He still recalls when word of his father's nomination came down.

"I came home one day from work, and there were 400 people on the lawn, cameras and Secret Service," he said. "One day I was working produce at Giant Food and the next day I was on the podium at Madison Square Garden" in New York City when Carter accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention.

"I had to borrow a suit," he laughed.

Ted Mondale remembers Carter as someone who "always had time for us kids; he wanted to know what we were up to. He loved chatting about baseball. For someone so important and that busy to connect in that way was so telling."

His father recalled in Carter's eulogy that, as their time in the White House winnowed down, they talked about how they wanted their tenure to be remembered. They came up with this: "We told the truth, we obeyed the law and we kept the peace."