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.”

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.