Dan Horn, the president-principal at St. Genevieve Parish Schools in Panorama City is awaiting his invitation to attend the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter on Jan. 9.
He would not miss paying his respects to the 39th president of the United States, someone he called his friend.
The two have visited each other multiple times, both in Carter’s hometown of Plains, Georgia, and when Carter trekked to the preschool, elementary school and high school in Panorama City on several occasions. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, who died in November 2023, became close with Horn, as well as teachers and students at the school, during decades of letter writing and multiple personal and electronic visits.
“I assume I will be going,” Horn said on Monday, Dec. 30, because he was told that Carter himself put him on his funeral invitation list. Details are still being worked out for the state funeral to be held at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, Horn said. As of late Monday, he had not yet received an invitation.
President Joe Biden declared Jan. 9 as a National Day of Mourning in a proclamation on Sunday, hours after Carter’s passing at the age of 100. “With his compassion and moral clarity, he worked to eradicate disease, forge peace, advance civil rights and human rights, promote free and fair elections, house the homeless, and always advocate for the least among us,” Biden said.
While Carter left the hospital and entered hospice care 22 months ago, Horn anticipated the end would be soon. But on Monday, he said his sadness was for the country losing a leader who respected others, dedicated his life both during and after his presidency toward peace and lifting up people in the poorest parts of the world.
Former President Jimmy Carter his wife Rosalynn Carter view the unveiling of the Carter Wall at St. Genevieve High School in Panorama City, Tuesday, February 19, 2013. (Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer)
“Our world is not going to be the same. Jimmy Carter was a tremendous moral compass for the country,” Horn said on Monday.
Carter was a first-term president who sustained political damage from high inflation, an energy crisis and the taking of hostages from the American embassy in Iran. Horn said Carter rebuffed advice to bomb Tehran or take military action and instead pursued diplomatic channels to free the captives.
He said Rosalynn advised him to take military action but he refused. “He is someone who walked the Christian path,” Horn said. “He believed in Jesus Christ, who was the prince of peace.”
The 52 hostages were released 15 minutes after Ronald Reagan became president. Even though the crisis may have cost him re-election, Carter told the media on the day of their release that was the happiest day of his life.
Horn visited Carter on his 84th birthday and went back for every birthday after that except during the COVID pandemic year, he said. Sometimes other faculty members and students would come along.
The one-of-a-kind relationship started when Horn read Rosalynn’s biography in 1984, wrote her a letter, and she responded asking him to visit her in Atlanta. The Carters visited the school many times, including in 2010 when Jimmy Carter was on a book tour in Southern California.
Sometimes, visits to the Carters in George would include 80 or more students and faculty members from St. Genevieve at one time to tiny Plains, whose population has hovered in recent years between 500 and 800 people. There, the residents of the hamlet put them up in their homes, cooked them dinner and treated them warmly as part of the community, Horn said.
“It is more about a relationship between Plains, Georgia, and the St. Genevieve community,” Horn said on Monday. “When we were there, it was like staying with family.”
Several years ago, the students raised $8,500 for the Carter Center, the president’s main nonprofit organization. He told them he would use the money to eradicate Dracunculiasis, an infection in humans caused by a parasite called the Guinea worm. The disease is spread from drinking contaminated water. The disease causes painful infections and worms that burst from the skin. The disease was rampant in South Sudan and Ghana.
“He chose to work in the poorest countries in the world because the people were poor and were suffering and dying,” said Horn. He said thanks to the Carter Center, the disease is close to being eradicated.
Students at St. Genevieve Parish Schools celebrate former President Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday with an assembly, which was recorded for Carter, at the Panorama City school on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. The school has a long standing relationship with the Carters. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Horn was recently in touch with Kim Carter Fuller, the daughter of Jimmy Carter’s brother’s, who recently visited the Panorama City Catholic parish schools. The students sang a message of happy birthday when Jimmy Carter turned 100. He was the longest-living president in U.S. history.
He recalled that during a visit to Plains, Rosalynn took some of the St. Genevieve children to their home and showed them what would be her and her husband’s burial site.
Kindergarteners Kirstin Avendano, 5, Gevorg Arakelyan, 6, and Mikayla Badawi, 5, blow out a candle in celebration of former President Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday at St. Genevieve Parish Schools in Panorama City on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. The school has a long standing relationship with the Carters. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
“She was preparing the site, picking out plants and trees that would be planted there,” Horn said. He said they wanted to be buried in their home town so that people would come there and see the community — the place of humble roots of the 39th president.
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