Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, passed away on Sunday, December 29, at the record-breaking age of 100. He was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and altered his reputation from that of a one-term commander-in-chief to that of a revered humanitarian via his accomplishments.
It was verified by his son James E. Carter III that he passed away at his home in Plains, Georgia, as reported by The Washington Post. His passing was also revealed by the Carter Center via a post on X, which was once known as Twitter.
Seventeen months earlier, at the age of 96, Rosalynn Carter, who had been married to Carter for over eight decades, passed away. In November of 2023, he made his last public appearance ever to express his sorrow at her passing.
Carter’s four children with Rosalynn, Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy, are the only ones who will carry on his legacy. Carter became the longest-living president of the United States in March 2019, and he also experienced the longest post-White House life of any president in American history. His marriage to Rosalynn lasted for 77 years, making it the longest marital period of any first couple.
Following “a series of short hospital stays,” the Carter Center reported in February 2023 that the former president had been transferred to hospice care. At the same time, the Carter Center said that the former president “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family.”
The fact that Carter was able to remain in hospice for such a long time came as a surprise to his whole family, as his grandson Jason Carter said to People in September 2023. He also added that it had become a “real blessing.”
“This is an important part of his faith journey, and it’s one that you don’t get to experience at any other time in your life except for the very end,” said Jason in response. “And so in that way, I think this has been a really meaningful time for him, and it’s been a really reflective time for him.”
In June, Jason shared with Southern Living that Carter was no longer awake on a daily basis. He also said that his grandpa was “experiencing the world as best he can as he continues through this process.”
Despite the fact that President Carter had to deal with a number of health issues over the course of the last decade, including a cancer diagnosis in 2015, he continued to be physically active well into his 90s. He continued to assist in the construction of homes for Habitat for Humanity, attended regular church services, and taught Sunday school.
At the time when physicians found that Carter had cancer that had spread to other regions of his body, Carter disclosed in August 2015 that he had a tiny lump removed from his liver. This was the moment when doctors made the discovery.
In response to the prognosis, Obama displayed his signature “humor and impatience,” as his friend and former communications director for the White House, Gerald Rafshoon, told PEOPLE at the time. “Nothing about Jimmy has changed with this diagnosis.”
Within a period of four months, the cancer was eradicated, and he went back to living his life as normal.
In July of 2017, the former president once again made news when he fell from dehydration while working at a Habitat for Humanity construction site in Canada. However, he was able to return to work the next morning after receiving the all-clear from the hospital.
After suffering a fall at his house in Plains, Georgia, in October 2019, he fractured his pelvis and was sent to the hospital for treatment. The Carter Center issued a statement in which they referred to his injuries as “minor.”
Not only was this the third time he had fallen in 2019, but it was also the second time he had fallen in October 2019. Earlier in same month, he was involved in another collision that resulted in his receiving fourteen stitches on his skull and a black eye. At the same time, in May of 2019, he suffered a fractured hip as a result of a fall that occurred at his residence.
A few hours after the first incident that occurred in October, he traveled to Nashville with Mrs. Carter in order to manage their yearly build for Habitat for Humanity. There, he assisted with the construction of corbels by gluing, drilling, and nailing together pieces of wood as part of a project to construct 21 new houses in the Park Preserve area and neighborhood of Nashville.
“One of the things that Jesus taught was that if you have any talents, you should try to utilize them for the benefit of others,” said President Carter while speaking to PEOPLE from the building site of Habitat for Humanity. “That’s what Rosa and I have both tried to do.”
“It’s hard to live until you’re 95 years old,” he said in an interview with individuals in 2019. “I think the best explanation for that is to marry the best spouse: someone who will take care of you and engage and do things to challenge you and keep you alive and interested in life.”
“I think both mine and Rosa’s minds are almost as good as they used to be, we just have limited capability on stamina and strength,” he said in conclusion. “But we still try to stay busy and do a good job at what we do.”
Carter had, according to all accounts, made a unique road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when he was inaugurated as President of the United States in 1976. This was in the aftermath of Watergate and the very unpopular pardon that his predecessor, President Gerald Ford, had granted to the disgraced President Richard Nixon.
He was a son of the Deep South who became a nuclear scientist and Navy submariner, then a peanut farmer and community organizer, and then the desegregationist governor of his home state of Georgia, whose segregationist groups still held great sway at the polls. As a result of his victory against Ford, who was serving as President at the time, in the presidential election of 1976, the Democrat became the first president from the Deep South since before the Civil War.
Carter’s time in the nation’s highest office was marked by economic uncertainty, rising gas prices, political upheavals, racial tensions and increasing evidence of America’s waning power overseas.
Despite the fact that he was successful in negotiating a long-lasting peace treaty between Egypt and Israel and in reestablishing full formal diplomatic relations with China, his popularity plummeted as a result of a series of clumsy public relations gaffes, the launch of a rescue mission for American hostages in Iran that ended in a fiasco, and the implementation of a controversial boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
He was defeated by Ronald Reagan, his Republican opponent, in a historic landslide in 1980, and he was not reelected.
Following their departure from the White House, however, the Carters established a precedent for post-presidential engagement that other administrations, such as the Clintons and the Obamas, have followed.
Together with Rosalynn Carter, he established The Carter Center with the goal of advancing global peace and human rights. He also mediated a nuclear-nonproliferation agreement with North Korea, served as an unofficial diplomat on behalf of the United States in troubled regions around the world, and directly participated in the construction of affordable housing for low-income families in both the United States and other countries.
The Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed to Carter in the year 2002 in recognition of his extraordinary efforts to advance democracy, human rights, and peace.
Carter continued to be known as the modest peanut farmer who had grown up in a little town in Georgia during his rise to national stardom, according to those who knew him well.
Ever since they went fishing together for the first time in 1979, Wayne Harpster, a dairy farmer from Pennsylvania, has been Carter’s companion. Throughout the years, they maintained communication with one another, with Carter making a trip to Harpster to go fishing almost every year. Furthermore, in 1989, the former president assisted his longtime fishing companion in the construction of a covered bridge.
Over the course of those years, there was no change in our relationship. 2014 was the year when Harpster told People that “that’s a lot of years.” “He’s still President Carter to me.”
The President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, was seldom seen without his first wife, Rosalynn, whom he had fallen in love with when he was still a young man attending the United States Naval Academy. Mrs. Carter admired her husband’s heart, his constitution, and his lack of pretense. She also shared his lack of pretension.
According to Harpster, however, the most important thing about her was that she was Carter’s “fishing buddy… which is deeper.” As they traveled to every corner of the world together, they not only traveled to monitor elections in developing democracies, fight disease in forgotten poor villages, and build houses for the homeless through Habitat for Humanity, but they also traveled to share a tent along some remote river where the fishing was good. They were inseparable.
Harpster said that he was there among the couple for the celebration of their 67th wedding anniversary, which took place in Russia in July of 2013.
At the fishing camp, we threw a little party for our friends. Being in the company of someone who has been together for such a long time was a really unusual experience. He said that there was a great deal of happiness that could be seen between them. “I’ve never seen two people as close as they are.”
Harpster said that he could feel the lasting pain of losing the reelection campaign in his friends, despite the fact that the Carters continued to be full and equal participants in his post-presidential life.
“Mrs. C. took it harder than the president,” he said to reporters. On the other hand, I believe that both of them were able to adapt fairly quickly, and they began to have a great deal of projects with The Carter Center and to be doing a lot of very excellent things in Africa… Simply keeping oneself occupied and looking forward to what they might do constructively for the world and for others who are in need of assistance and support.
“He has had a very full, wonderful, and productive life,” said Betty Pope, Carter’s cousin, in an interview with People magazine. “He wanted to make sure every day of his life he was able to do what he was charged to do personally — which, he felt, was to try to make peace and improve the world.”
