Jimmy Carter is preparing to celebrate its 100 years This Tuesday, the first time an American president has lived a full century and the latest milestone in a life that took the son of a Depression-era rural farmer to the White House and to travel the world as a Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian. Peace and defender of democracy.
The Georgia Democrat and 39th president of the United States, who has lived the last 19 months at a Plains hospice centercontinues to defy expectations, just as it did during its extraordinary rise from the family peanut farming and storage business to the global stage. He served a presidential term of 1977 a 1981 and then worked for more than four decades in front of the Carter Centerwhich he and his wife Rosalynn co-founded in 1982 to “establish peace, fight disease, and build hope.”
“Not everyone gets to turn 100 on this earth, and when someone turns 100, and uses that time to do so much good for so many people, it’s worth celebrating,” Jason Carter, grandson of the former president and chairman of the board of directors of the Carter Center.
“These last few months, 19 months, that he has been in palliative care, has been an opportunity for our family to reflect and for the rest of the country and the world to reflect on him. “It has been a very rewarding moment.”
Jimmy Carter during the funeral of his wife and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, in November 2023. Photo: AP
The former president born October 1, 1924 in Plainswhere he has lived more than 80 of his 100 years. He is expected to celebrate his birthday in the same one-story house he and Rosalynn built in the early 1960s, before his first election as a Georgia state senator. The former first lady, who was also born in Plains, died last November at 96 years old.
On September 17, the Carter Center hosted a music gala in Atlanta to honor the former president with a range of genres and artists, including some who campaigned with him in 1976. The event raised more than $1.2 million for center programs and will be broadcast Tuesday night on Georgia Public Television.
In St. Paul, Minnesota, volunteers from Habitat for Humanity pay tribute to Carter with a five-day initiative to build 30 homes. The Carters became ambassadors of the international organization after leaving the White House and They organized annual construction projects until the age of 90. Carter survived a cancer diagnosis at age 90, several falls and hip surgery in the mid-1990s, before announcing at 98 that he was entering hospice.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in 2019, in Nashville. Photo: AP
Plains residents were scheduled for another concert Tuesday night.
The last time Jimmy Carter was seen in public It was almost a year agoin a reclining wheelchair to attend his wife’s two funerals. Visibly diminished and silent, he was accompanied in the front row of Atlanta’s Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church by the couple’s four children, all living former first ladies, President Joe Biden and his wife Jill, and former President Bill Clinton. A day later, Carter joined his family and parishioners at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, where the former president taught catechism for decades.
Jason Carter said the centennial celebrations were not something the family expected to see once their grandmother passed away. The former president’s hospital bed had been installed in the same room so that he could see his wife, with whom He was married for 77 years.and talk to her in her last days and hours.
The Carters organized annual building projects into their 90s. Photo: AP
“Frankly, we didn’t think he was going to live much longer,” Jason Carter said. “But it is a journey of faith for him, and he has truly given himself to what he believes is God’s plan. He knows he’s not in charge. But in these last few months especially he has become much more involved in world events, much more in politics, much more emotionally with all of us.”
Support for Kamala Harris
Jason Carter said the century-old president, born just four years after women were granted the constitutional right to vote and four decades before black women gained access to the ballot boxas, is eager to cast his presidential vote for Vice President Kamala Harristhe Democrat who wants to become the first woman, the second black person and the first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office.
“He, like many of us, was incredibly gratified by his friend Joe Biden’s brave decision to pass the torch,” Jason Carter said. “My grandfather and the Carter Center have monitored more than 100 elections in 40 other countries. So he knows how rare it is for someone who is a sitting president to give up power in any context.”
The North Lawn of the White House commemorates Carter’s 100th birthday this Tuesday. Photo: AP
He continued: “When we started asking him about his 100th birthday, he said he was excited to vote for Kamala Harris.”
Early voting in Georgia starts October 15two weeks after James Earl Carter Jr. begins living the 101st year of his life.
Translation: Elisa Carnelli