Former President Jimmy Carter Dies Aged 100

President Jimmy Carter in the documentary ‘Man from Plains’. Photo: Sony Pictures Classics.

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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has died aged 100.
He served as the 39th President.
Carter became better known for his service after his single term in office.

Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States and the longest-surviving person to hold that office, died today aged 100.

Carter, who served one term in the White House and saw his time marked by both triumphs and issues, became known for his crusading human rights work and other efforts once he left office.

Jimmy Carter: Early life and Career

(L to R) President Jimmy Carter and Willie Nelson in the documentary ‘Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President’. Photo: CNN Films.

Jimmy Carter was born in 1924 and raised in Plains, Georgia.

He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 and served in the U.S. Navy’s submarine branch. Upon returning home from his military service, he revived his family’s peanut-farming business.

Opposing racial segregation, Carter supported the growing civil rights movement, and became an activist within the Democratic Party.

He served in the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967 and then as Governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975.

Jimmy Carter: His Time as President

(L to R) Willie Nelson and President Jimmy Carter in the documentary ‘Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President’. Photo: CNN Films.

Elected in 1976 after beating Republican incumbent Gerald Ford of the Republican Party in the 1976 presidential election, Carter took office in 1977.

His unfamiliarity with Washington was seen as a virtue after the Watergate scandal and Vietnam war years. And his time in office started off with some early successes: in 1977 Carter completed a treaty that returned control of the Panama Canal to Panama –– an agreement that eluded his predecessors.

The following year, he facilitated talks at Camp David between the then Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, and the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, that led to a peace deal between the two countries.

But his presidency ultimately became riddled with economic and foreign policy crises, starting with high unemployment and double-digit inflation and culminating in the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

A rolling energy crisis saw the price of oil triple from 1978 to 1980, leading to lines at gas stations.

Carter’s run in the White House was limited to one term and he lost the 1980 general election in a landslide to Ronald Reagan.

Jimmy Carter: Life After the White House

(L to R) Willie Nelson and President Jimmy Carter in the documentary ‘Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President’. Photo: CNN Films.

Carter was awarded the Nobel peace prize for “decades of untiring effort” for human rights and peacemaking. His humanitarian work was conducted under the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which he founded in the early 1980s, with his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Smith-Carter.

He traveled the world as a peace emissary, election observer and public health advocate. He made visits to North Korea in 1994 and Cuba in 2002. The Carter Center is credited with helping to cure river blindness, trachoma and Guinea worm disease, which went from millions of cases in Africa and Asia in 1986 to a handful today.

An outspoken advocate for peace, he was a critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, drone warfare, warrantless government surveillance and the prison at Guantánamo Bay. He won admiration, and loathing, for his involvement in efforts for Middle East peace, urging a two-state solution.

In February last year, he entered hospice care after being diagnosed with melanoma that metastasized to his brain and liver, and his death was announced by his son, James E. Carter III.

Carter is survived by his children, James, Chip, Jeff and Amy; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by Rosalynn and one grandchild.

Chip paid tribute to his father in a statement:

“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love. 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.”