The family of the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) honored the civil rights hero Saturday in his hometown of Troy, Ala., the first of several memorials before he is interred in Atlanta on Thursday.
“He was always concerned about the health and well-being of his family,” Grant Lewis, the younger brother of the late congressman, said Saturday at Troy University. “His last word was ‘How’s the family doing? How is everybody doing?'”
Lewis, who died last week at the age of 80 after battling pancreatic cancer, was an American civil rights hero and served 17 terms representing Atlanta in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“John Robert Lewis, my big brother, humble man, simple man and a man of God. He always wanted to improve the lives of others without any concern for himself,” his younger sister Rosa Tyner said during the memorial service.
Gospel singer Dottie Peoples also performed at Lewis’s memorial Saturday morning, according to NBC News.
The life of Lewis will be celebrated for six days across five separate cities. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Thursday that the congressman will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Monday.
On Sunday morning, Lewis will be carried across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, commemorating the 1972 “Bloody Sunday” massacre, where Lewis was severely beaten by police in Selma, Ala., prompting Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act later that year.
Lewis will lie in repose until a Saturday evening service at the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Selma.
The Episcopal church serves as a symbol for American civil liberties and was the starting point for Montgomery’s voting rights march on March 7, 1967.