ATLANTA — Georgia’s native son is gone. Former President Jimmy Carter has died at age 100.
Carter died on Sunday afternoon at his home in Plains, Ga., the Carter Center confirmed.
Carter was the 39th president of the United States, serving from 1977 to 1981. Shortly following the death of George H. W. Bush, Carter became the longest living president in U.S. history.
In October, Carter was celebrated as he surpassed his 100th birthday after spending more than a year in hospice care.
“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” said Chip Carter, the former president’s son. “My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family because of the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”
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James Earl Carter Jr. was born October 1, 1924.
Before his career in politics, Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served seven years in the Navy submarine force.
After returning home, Carter quickly became a leader of the community, serving on county boards supervising education, the hospital authority and even the library.
In 1962, Carter won the election to Georgia’s State Senate. He lost his first gubernatorial campaign in 1966, but won the next election, becoming Georgia’s 76th governor on Jan. 12, 1971.
Carter announced his candidacy for President of the United States in December 1974. He won the nomination that year at the Democratic National Convention, choosing Walter Mondale, of Minnesota, as his running mate.
He was faced with the task of combating economic issues of inflation and unemployment. By the end of his term, Carter could claim an increase of nearly eight million jobs and a decrease in the budget deficit, measured in percentage of the gross national product.
Among his other successes: The Panama Canal treaties, normalized relations with China and the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel.
At home, his administration oversaw the creation of two cabinet-level departments — energy and education — and prefaced the Conservative era by deregulating several industries.
The seizure of hostages at the U. S. embassy in Iran in 1979 dominated the news during the last 14 months of the Carter administration. The consequences of Iran’s holding Americans captive, together with continuing inflation at home, contributed to Carter’s defeat in 1980.
In the last decades of his life, Carter was often described as perhaps the greatest ex-president. He regarded it as a backhanded compliment.
“It bothered him to hear that,” said Bert Lance, a close friend who worked in Carter’s state and federal administrations. “He and Rosalynn thought he accomplished a lot as president.”
“Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have done more good things for more people in more places than any other couple on the face of the Earth,” President Bill Clinton said in awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999.
In 1982, Carter became University Distinguished Professor at Emory University and founded The Carter Center. It wasn’t until June 2019, that the former president was finally granted tenure at Emory University after teaching there for 37 years.
In 1986, the Carters cut the ribbon on the center’s permanent facilities along with the adjoining Jimmy Carter Presidential Library & Museum (collectively known as the Carter Presidential Center) along the John Lewis Freedom Parkway.
On hand for the center’s dedication was Carter’s presidential successor, Former President Ronald Reagan, along with wife Nancy.
Carter’s vision of the presidential center was as a peaceful place, like Camp David, “where seemingly unresolvable international conflicts could be worked out through mediation ... (with) a policy center where scholars could seek solutions to issues of human rights, arms control, hunger, health, environment and world peace,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Howard Pousner wrote in 1986.
The Carter Center has spearheaded the international effort to eradicate Guinea worm disease, which is poised to be the second human disease in history to be eradicated.
Under Carter’s leadership, The Carter Center sent 107 election-observation missions to the Americas, Africa, and Asia.
Channel 2 Action News was the only Atlanta television station there when Carter received his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, in 2002. He was awarded the prestigious award “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”
During his acceptance speech, Carter addressed human rights and acknowledged the courage of other Nobel laureates before him, including fellow Georgian, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“The Nobel Prize also profoundly magnified the inspiring global influence of Martin Luther King Jr., the greatest leader that my native state has ever produced,” Carter said at the time.
He concluded his speech by asking all people to work towards peace instead of war.
“Ladies and gentlemen, war may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children,” Carter said.
Up until just a few years before their deaths, Jimmy and Rosalynn volunteered one week a year for Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit that helps build or renovate homes for people in need.
Despite remaining active through the years, Carter’s health started to affect his humanitarian work. At age 91, Carter was diagnosed with cancer.
“We thought life was over for me. I think that having been together for 69 years obviously made it easier for us to weather that storm of emotions,” Carter said in a 2016 interview. “There was one period of a few days that I thought I only had a couple weeks left of life.”
Doctors discovered cancer in his liver and brain.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Rosalynn Carter said. “That was … earthshaking.”
Fortunately, things took a more promising turn in the weeks and months that followed. A combination of radiation and immunotherapy drugs had proven so effective, his doctors stopped treatment (although they continued to monitor him for signs of cancer).
Following his recovery, Carter said he was grateful for the time he was given.
“I’ve had a chance to get back to work at the Carter Center in a reduced way. And in the meantime, I’ve been enjoying my home, teaching Sunday School and church, and being with my family pretty regularly. So, I’ve had a good life since then,” he told the AJC’s Ernie Suggs.
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In 2017, Carter was hospitalized after he became dehydrated while working on a Habitat for Humanity build in Winnipeg, Canada. He was able to return to the Habitat site the next day.
In 2019, at the age of 95, Carter suffered a series of falls at his home. He had his hip replaced after the first fall and then suffered a fractured hip and a black eye after two other falls.
After one of those falls, Carter and wife Rosalynn attended a kick-off to a Habitat for Humanity project the next day in Nashville.
Ahead of his 95th birthday, Carter said he and Mrs. Carter had to slow down with their humanitarian efforts.
“We both are pretty active still, but we’ve cut back some. We used to go to Africa three to four times a year and then always to China, and we’ve cut out those foreign trips, some of them,” Carter said.
On Oct. 1, 2024, Carter turned 100 years old. He was celebrated with a musical celebration at the Fox Threatre in midtown and a film festival at the Carter Presidential Library.
“Not everybody gets 100 years on this earth, and when somebody does, and when they use that time to do so much good for so many people, it’s worth celebrating,” his grandson Jason Carter, chair of The Carter Center governing board, said in an interview.
In Plains, About 25 family members filled his home, enjoying cupcakes on the front lawn while antique World War II planes flew over in his honor.
Gov. Brian Kemp, for his part, declared the day “Jimmy Carter Day” to recognize his legacy as the state’s 76th governor.
In November, Carter received his 10th Grammy nomination in the category of Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording for his audiobook titled “Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration.”
He had already won 3 Grammys.
Since taking office, Carter never missed the inauguration of a new president. That changed in 2021.
The Carter Center announced that President and Mrs. Carter would not be attending the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The former first family stayed at home in Plains as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the country.
A spokesperson at The Carter Center sent a statement saying the Carters sent them their “best wishes” and that they “look(ed) forward to a successful administration.”
Months later, on the day that marked his 100th day in office, President Joe Biden and wife Dr. Jill Biden came to Georgia to thank everyone for helping get him elected.
Prior to a rally in Atlanta, the Bidens made a stop in Plains to see the Carters. They said since the Carters couldn’t make it to Washington for the inauguration, the Bidens decided to come to them.
Biden and Carter had a long history. When Carter first moved into the White House in 1977, Biden was in his first term in the U.S. Senate.
Of everything they’ve accomplished together and apart — the White House, a Nobel Peace Prize for him, her groundbreaking work in mental health advocacy — President and Mrs. Carter said their marriage milestone was what really stopped people in their tracks.
The two were married for 77 years. In 2019, the couple became the longest living president and first lady in U.S. history. They surpassed George H.W. and Barbra Bush’s record, with 26,765 days together.
President Carter said he married the love of his life following his graduation from the United States Naval Academy.
On July 7, 1946, Carter married Eleanor Rosalynn Smith, who was friends with his younger sister, Ruth — and who’d turned him down the first time he’d proposed a few months earlier when she visited him at Annapolis.
“When Dad asked her to marry him for the second time she said yes, but she expected him to provide her with a life of adventure,” son James “Chip” Carter said about his parents.
“We would continue to write each other letters,” Jimmy Carter said.
Carter said part of his secret to his longevity was Rosalynn.
“I give her major credit for it. We have a good harmonious relationship. Still kind of demanding and we kind of encourage each other to take a chance and to enter bold things on occasion,” Carter said.
In July 2023, the Carters celebrated their 77th anniversary.
“My biggest secret is to marry the right person if you want to have a long-lasting marriage,” Carter said during an anniversary celebration for the couple.
“Every day there needs to be reconciliation and communication between the two spouses,” the former president said, explaining that he and Rosalynn, both devout Christians, read the Bible together aloud each night — something they’ve done for years, even when separated by their travels. “We don’t go to sleep with some remaining differences between us,” he said.
“Dad got used to mom disagreeing with him because she was really good at it,” son Jack Carter said about his parents. “And she became a partner in the true sense of the word, where they had equal footing.”
Rosalynn Carter said one of the biggest things that helped keep their marriage lasting as long as it did, was finding common interests.
“Jimmy and I are always looking for things to do together.” Still, she emphasized a caveat: “Each (person) should have some space. That’s really important.”
Just days before his 99th birthday, President and Mrs. Carter made their last public appearance together at the Plains Peanut Festival.
Video from the festival showed the couple being driven around the festival in the back of an SUV with the windows down. The Carter Center said the city’s famed peanut butter ice cream might be on the former president’s lunch menu.
In May 2023, The Carter Center announced that Rosalynn Carter had been diagnosed with dementia. Six months later, on Nov. 19, Mrs. Carter passed away at the family’s home in Plains. She was 96.
Mrs. Carter’s funeral marked the last appearance President Carter made in public.
During her funeral, Maranatha Baptist Church Pastor Tony Lowden described Mrs. Carter’s competitive streak, speaking to the mourners in what he imagined to be the voice of Rosalynn Carter: “She would say to you today, ‘don’t grieve for me, for now, I’m free. ... Jimmy tried to beat me here. I got here first. I won the prize. Tell him I beat him and I’m waiting on him.’”
During a memorial service for her mother, daughter Amy read from one of the letters Jimmy Carter wrote to Rosalynn while he was at the Naval Academy.
“When I see you, I fall in love with you all over again. Does that seem strange to you? It doesn’t to me. Goodbye darling, until tomorrow - Jimmy.”
While final plans have yet to be announced, it is expected that Carter will be laid to rest next to Rosalynn in front of the modest ranch house the couple built in 1961.
The spot has a view of the front porch of the home.
Carter leaves behind three sons, one daughter, nine grandsons (one deceased), three granddaughters, five great-grandsons, and nine great-granddaughters.
The Carter Center, Whitehouse.gov, The Associated Press and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this article.
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