A President Passes

Jimmy Carter served just one term as the 39th President of the U.S.A., but his public service started long before his White House stay and continued to the end of his long life. He has died aged 100.

Jimmy Carter often described himself as a Georgia peanut farmer. He was born in 1924 on the family farm, where he helped out and sold peanuts on the streets of the nearby town, Plains. He gave credit to his high school English  teacher for encouraging him to study and discover the world beyond his rural town. He decided joining the Navy would let him travel, and that's what he did after college, joining the crew of a nuclear submarine. He married Rosalynn, also from Plains, who was his constant companion and aide well into their nineties.

But he put an end to his naval career when his father died suddenly in 1953. Carter returned to Georgia to take over the family business, which his father had expanded from the farm. And he also took on the many community roles his father had held.

In 1962, he was elected to the Georgia Senate and in 1966 ran to become the Democrat candidate for Georgia Governor. He came third but spent the next four years travelling round the state gaining name recognition before winning the nomination and the election in 1970. Two years into his governorship he started campaigning to run for President. In 1976 he beat Gerald Ford and became the 39th President.

Striving for Peace
Carter's presidency was marked by foreign affairs. He helped broker a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, normalised diplomatic relations with China and agreed nuclear arms reduction with the Soviet Union. But ultimately it was another foreign affair that proved to be Carter's downfall. When 50 Americans were taken hostage by Ayatollah Khomeini's régime in Iran, Carter held extensive negotiations but failed to have them freed. They were finally released after more than a year, minutes after Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, was inaugurated.

Jimmy Carter believed that the U.S.A. must reduce it's dependency on imported oil and was an early adopter of renewable energies.

Continued Service
After leaving the White House in 1981, Jimmy Carter remained astonishingly active. He acted as an informal envoy for later presidents in conflict situations such as North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Haiti and the Middle East. He was a member of the Elders, the group of retired global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007 to work for peace, justice and human rights.

With Rosalynn, he created the Carter Center in 1982 and worked tirelessly on public health and democracy initiatives.

The NGO has delivered millions of doses of treatments for life-threatening diseases such as malaria and river blindness. Since 1986, their programme has all but eradicated Guinea worm disease, which used to affect 3.5 million people a year.

Nobel Laureate
In 2002 Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. The committee commended him, “Through his Carter Center, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2002, Carter has since his presidency undertaken very extensive and persevering conflict resolution on several continents. He has shown outstanding commitment to human rights, and has served as an observer at countless elections all over the world. He has worked hard on many fronts to fight tropical diseases and to bring about growth and progress in developing countries. Carter has thus been active in several of the problem areas that have figured prominently in the over one hundred years of Peace Prize history.”

In his acceptance speech, President Carter chose to highlight the need to reduce the enormous wealth gap between rich and poor countries.

Citizen Carter
In his farewell address to the nation” in January 1981, President Carter said, “In a few days I will lay down my official responsibilities in office to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of president, the title of citizen.” He kept that promise until the end, proudly voting in the Presidential election in November at the age of 100.

President Carter was given a state funeral in the presence of all five living present or former presidents before his coffin was returned to Plains Georgia to be buried next to Rosalynn, who died in 2023.