Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter passed away Sunday at the age of 100, a statement from The Carter Center confirmed.
Carter, who was the longest-living American president, died Dec. 29, more than a year after entering home hospice care in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, last February following a series of short hospital stays.
Born a month before the election of Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Carter said he wanted to live long enough to cast his vote for president in 2024 – and he accomplished that goal.
His death comes shortly after his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, passed away at 96 last November. Carter attended her funeral in Atlanta despite his own declining health.
Carter’s grandson Jason Carter told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in August that the elder Carter had said he was “only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris” in November’s presidential election.
News of Carter’s health struggles sparked an outpouring of well-wishes and remembrances from across the political spectrum, showing how Carter’s reputation had grown since his tumultuous single term in office and decades of advocacy work in his post-presidential life.
Carter was a little-known governor of Georgia when he announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president in the 1976 election. He used that outsider status to ride a wave of resentment against Washington ignited by the Vietnam War, Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation to narrowly defeat then-president Gerald Ford.
While he oversaw some successes at home and abroad, Carter’s presidency was clouded by double-digit inflation and a crippling energy crisis that led to gasoline shortages and rationing.
He was further undone by the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 that saw 52 American diplomats and citizens held captive inside the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days. A military operation ordered by Carter to rescue the hostages failed and left eight American servicemen dead. It came seven months before the 1980 election and effectively sealed Carter’s landslide defeat to Republican Ronald Reagan.
Yet it was after Carter left the White House that he arguably made more of an impact. He and Rosalynn established The Carter Center in 1982, with a focus on diplomacy and advocating for human rights and democracy around the world. His work, including overseeing elections in developing nations and mediating international disputes, won Carter a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
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He also volunteered extensively with Habitat for Humanity, making annual trips with Rosalynn to help build homes with the organization. The Carters continued to travel for their volunteer and advocacy work well into their 80s and 90s.
Carter only began to show signs of slowing down in the past couple of years, when the COVID-19 pandemic limited his public appearances.
Carter celebrated his most recent birthday in October with family and friends in Plains, the tiny town where both he and Rosalynn were born. The couple married in 1946 and had four children.
More to come…
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