Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter dead at 100

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, whose term was marked by a recession at home and the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and who dedicated his life after leaving office to promote peace and alleviating human suffering, has died. He was 100 years old.

Chip Carter, a son of the former president, said his father died at 3:40 p.m. on Sunday while surrounded by family at his home in Plains, Georgia, according to a statement from the Carter Center. He was the longest-living president in U.S. history.

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

While Carter was long considered to be in good condition for his age, he began to experience a growing number of health issues during the last decade of his life.

In 2015, Carter underwent surgery to remove a tumor from his liver and received treatment for melanoma spots on his brain. He also suffered multiple falls at home home in Plains in 2019, one of which led to bleeding and pressure on his brain that required surgery.

Weeks after one of those falls, he told churchgoers at his Sunday school that he was “completely at ease” with dying and said he believes in life after death.

In February 2023, Carter ended his medical treatment to receive hospice care at home, but the former president defied expectations by living nearly two more years, celebrating his 100th birthday, and voting for Kamala Harris in last month’s election. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, died in November 2023 at the age of 96.

Carter, a Democrat, served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. His one-term presidency was marked by a series of domestic and international crises, including a recession, the 1979 oil crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraq-Iran War and the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

In September 1979, with the lowest approval rating of any U.S. president in 30 years, he suffered a PR disaster when he collapsed while trying to run a marathon in front of cameras. But his problems would only get worse as Americans in Tehran were taken hostage and the U.S. economy officially entered into a recession amid rising inflation and high unemployment.

One of the lowest points of Carter’s presidency came on April 25, 1980, when he announced that a military operation to rescue the hostages had not only failed, but ended in disaster: One of the helicopters had collided with a transport plane as it flew over Iran, killing 8 American troops and injuring several others.

As the crisis continued, Carter’s approval rating fell to the lowest mark of any U.S. president since the end of World War II. He faced an intra-party challenge from U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy in the run-up to the 1980 presidential election, but nonetheless managed to win the Democratic Party’s nomination. He lost the election in an electoral landslide to his Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan.

Carter became increasingly popular after leaving the White House and founding the Carter Center to promote human rights and peace efforts, to alleviate human suffering, and to fight disease. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

In the final years of his life, he and his wife Rosalynn were proud and active supporters of the non-profit organization Habitat for Humanity, which provides housing for low-income families around the world. He also taught at Emory University in Atlanta and taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia.