Former President Jimmy Carter, a man who redefined what a post-presidency could be, died Sunday. He was 100. His son, Chip Carter confirmed that the former president died at his home in Plains about 3:45 p.m.
The only Georgian ever elected to the White House, Carter left office after a single term that was highlighted by forging peace between Israel and Egypt, but was overshadowed by the Iran hostage crisis. In the decades after, his reputation grew through his and wife Rosalynn Carter’s work at the Carter Center in Atlanta and his philanthropic causes such as Habitat for Humanity.
“People will be celebrating Jimmy Carter for hundreds of years. His reputation is only going to grow,” Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley wrote in his book “The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.”
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, in 2002 for his diplomacy work through The Carter Center.
James Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains on Oct. 1, 1924, the first of four children of Earl Carter, a farmer and businessman, and Lillian Gordy Carter, a registered nurse. He gained an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, graduated and joined the Navy submarine branch where in seven years he worked his way into “Rickover’s boys,” the elite nascent unit of America’s nuclear submarine fleet championed by the iconic Admiral Hyman Rickover. Carter was on his way up until a death at home changed his destiny.
His father Earl, a farmer, businessman and cornerstone personality in the Plains community, died from cancer. Carter left the Navy and its far-from-Plains postings such as Hawaii, and he, Rosalynn and their growing family returned to Georgia in 1953 to take over the family farming business. It was there he first ran for school board, then state senator.
He was elected governor in 1970. Carter served one successful term before launching an improbable bid to become president, winning the Democratic nomination and then defeating Republican President Gerald Ford in November 1976. On his inauguration day, rather than driving past the crowds in an armored limousine, Jimmy and Rosalynn emerged from the car with daughter Amy at their side and walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, holding hands and waving.
Carter’s successes included promoting human rights, adding to the national park and preserve system, reestablishing governmental credibility after the Watergate Crisis, and the Camp David Accords, which forged a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. They were overshadowed by trouble at home and abroad. At home, Carter and his advisers, most of them Washington outsiders, met resistance from his own party.
Then, in November 1979, Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostages. He tried negotiation, then launched a bold rescue mission that never reached its target because of helicopter failure. He could not resolve the situation until the last day of his administration.
At home, a foundering economy exacerbated by oil embargoes from Mideast countries and the rise of the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan helped lead to his defeat in November 1980.
Carter began volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, a fairly new Americus-based organization, building houses for the poor. Then, together with Rosalynn, he founded the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which focused on making peace and spreading health and democracy around the world. It will carry the couple’s humanitarian and democratic work forward.
From his work as president and as the leader of the Carter Center, he won the Nobel Prize, the United National Human Rights Prize and many other notable awards from countries, organizations and world leaders. The Carters both were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.
”Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter,” Clinton said, “have done more good things for more people in more places than any other couple on the face of the Earth.”
Rosalynn Carter, Jimmy Carter’s wife of 77 years, died in November 2023. They are survived by their children Amy, Chip, Jack and Jeff; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.
© 2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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