Former President of the United States Jimmy Carter died this Sunday (29). Carter was the country’s 39th president. The information was confirmed to “The Washington Post” by the politician’s son and, later, informed by the Carter Center. Jimmy Carter was 100 years old and died at home.
Jimmy Carter served one term as president. After leaving office, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his pursuit of peace and human rights, and had a long history of working with Habitat for Humanity.
“My father was a hero, not just to me, but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights and selfless love,” Chip Carter, the former president’s son, said in a statement. “My brothers, sister and I share it with the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family for the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live out these shared beliefs.”
A farmer in the White House
Jimmy Carter was a farmer who, as president of the United States, faced an unfavorable economy and Iran hostage crisisbut who brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work.
DemocratCarter occupied the White House from January 1977 to January 1981. Having lived longer than any other former president in United States history, he saw his reputation improve after he left office – a situation he himself acknowledged.
He defeated then-Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election to become the 39th president of the United States, but lost categorically to the Republican Ronald Reagan em 1980.
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Carter left office profoundly unpopularbut worked vigorously for decades on humanitarian causes after that. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his “tireless effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, advance democracy and human rights, and promote economic and social development.”
In recent years, Carter has had several health problemsincluding melanoma that has spread to his liver and brain. Carter decided to receive hospice care in February 2023 rather than undergo additional medical intervention. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, died on November 19, 2023, at age 96. Carter looked frail when he attended her funeral in a wheelchair.
Carter, a former governor of Georgiaarrived at the White House as a Washington underdog promising honesty after the political corruption scandal of Watergate which forced the republican Richard Nixon to resign in 1974, elevating his vice president, Gerald Ford, to the presidency.
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In January 2022, Carter expressed concern that “toxic polarization” threatened American democracy following the tumultuous presidency of Donald Trumpfalse allegations that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” and the attack on the US Capitol by Republican supporters in January 2021. Carter died shortly before Trump returned to the US Presidency next month.
“Our great nation now teeters on the edge of an abyss. Without immediate action, we run the genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy. Americans need to set aside differences and work together before it is too late,” Carter wrote in a New York Times op-ed that year.
Camp David Chords
Carter brokered the 1978 Camp David Accords that ushered in peace between enemies Israel and Egypt, bringing together then-Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Beginand the then Egyptian president, Anwar Sadatfor almost two weeks of personal diplomacy.
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The Iran hostage crisis marked his presidency. Iranian revolutionaries captured American diplomats at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 hostages for 444 days before finally releasing them on the day Carter left office. Carter left looking weak after a military rescue mission he ordered in 1980 ended in failure, with eight U.S. soldiers killed in an aircraft crash.
Carter also projected an image of weakness when he ordered a U.S. boycott of 1980 Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Carter still struggled ineffectively with an economy marked by recession, double-digit inflation and rising oil prices. After the presidency, Carter returned to his peanut farm in Plains, Georgia, and managed to remake its image. He created the Carter Center to lead his humanitarian efforts.
‘I had a wonderful life’
James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia. He graduated from US Naval Academy in 1946, he served in the nuclear submarine program and left to run the family peanut farming business. He and his wife Rosalynn had three sons and one daughter.
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Carter became a millionaire, Georgia state congressman, and governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. “I had a wonderful life”Carter told reporters in Atlanta in 2015. “I had thousands of friends. And I have had an exciting, adventurous and fulfilling existence.”
Carter has written more than two dozen books, from a presidential memoir to a children’s book and poetry, as well as works on religious faith and diplomacy. His book “Faith: A Journey for All” was published in 2018.
A regret
“Over the years, in various classrooms and public forums, I have often been asked if there was a substantial action or decision I made as president that I would have changed,” Carter wrote in his White House Diary.
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“Somewhat facetiously, I replied, ‘I would have sent another helicopter to ensure the success of the hostage rescue effort in April 1980.’ But I truly believe that if I had done that, I would have been re-elected.”
The Carters returned to Plains after leaving the White House, and Carter taught scripture at Maranatha Baptist Church until 2020.
In his rich post-presidential life, Carter helped organize peace talks between North and South Korea and a ceasefire in Bosnia.
Through the Carter Center, he helped monitor elections around the world to ensure they were fair. He traveled to Haiti in 1994 to negotiate the restoration of constitutional government, avoiding a threatened US-led invasion.
Upon accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, while the U.S., under President George W. Bushprepared to invade Iraq, Carter made his disapproval clear. “For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventive war may well set an example that could have catastrophic consequences,” he said.
Carter attended Republican Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, the sixth and final presidential inauguration ceremony he witnessed after leaving office. Days earlier, he had told worshipers at his home church that, among 22 voters in his family, none had voted for Trump. However, Carter was the first former president to accept an invitation to Trump’s first-term inauguration.
