Former President Jimmy Carter, 100, Passes Away in Georgia Home

Former United States President Jimmy Carter passed away in his Georgia home surrounded by family. He was 100 years old. He is survived by his four children: Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren. His wife passed in November 2023 due to complications from dementia.

Carter was the 39th President, serving from January 1977 to January 1981 during a turbulent time in U.S. history. He is best known for the 1978 Camp David Accords, which settled decades of dispute between Israel and Egypt, including the return of the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had occupied after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He also negotiated the Salt II Nuclear Arms Treaty in June 1979 but asked Congress to suspend ratification after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

James Earl Carter Junior was born on 1 October 1924 in Plains, Georgia, and was the first American President to be born in a hospital. He graduated high school in 1941 and studied at Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where he joined the Reserve Officer’s Training Corps. In 1943, he was assigned to the U.S. Naval Academy, a lifelong goal, and graduated in 1946. He met with his wife while at the Academy, and they married shortly after his graduation.

Carter served as a Navy officer from 1946 to 1953. In 1951, he was assigned to the submarine USS K-1 and eventually became its executive officer. In 1952, he was transferred to the command of Captain Hyman Rickover, who led the U.S. Navy’s new nuclear submarine program.

On 12 December 1952, an accident at the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown, flooding the basement area with radioactive water and debris. Carter was ordered to the facility and led a team of soldiers with other members of the U.S. and Canadian military to clean up the accident and decommission the reactor. Carter and his subordinates were lowered into the radioactive areas for 90-second periods to carry out complex tasks and help drain the contaminated water.

In 1953, Carter was supposed to be transferred to the USS Seawolf, the second nuclear power submarine in the U.S. Navy. However, his father died in the same year, and he received a discharge so he could take over the family’s peanut farm.

He entered politics a decade later and was a Georgia state senator from 1963 to 1967. Carter attempted to run for governor in 1966 and was defeated in the primary. In 1970, he won a bitter election in the post-Equal Rights Amendment South to become Georgia’s 76th governor from 1971 to 1975.

In 1976, he was elected as the 39th President against incumbent Gerald Ford, who became President on 9 August 1974 when then President Richard M. Nixon resigned due to the Watergate Scandal. He won with just 50.1% of the popular vote, taking 297 electoral votes, receiving virtually no support west of the Mississippi River.

After his Presidency, Carter remained extremely active in international diplomacy, working toward conflict resolution in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

In 1984, Carter and his wife formed the Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project to support the charity now known as Habitat for Humanity. On their 40th wedding anniversary in 1986, they assisted in renovating four Chicago-area homes. Over the next 40 years, Carter’s foundation would help build over 4,350 homes, and as recently as 2019, he was still swinging a hammer.

In 1986, the Carter Center started the Guinea Worm Eradication Program. In the 1980s, almost four million people in 21 countries were infected by a parasitic roundworm that would enter the body during its larval stage. Growing up to a meter long, they would slowly emerge through the skin, causing excruciating pain. The parasite is on the brink of elimination, with only 16 probable cases reported in 2023.

In 2015, Carter was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and underwent surgery. Doctors found he had melanoma, a type of skin cancer, that had also spread to his brain. Carter had hip replacement surgery in 2019, followed by a brain bleed due to a fall and then a series of hospitalizations. In early 2023, he ended his medical treatment and moved to in-home hospice.

With 44 years of hindsight, most historians consider Carter a “below average” President but one of the most effective past presidents in U.S. history due to his diplomatic, humanitarian, and peacekeeping efforts.

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