Jimmy Carter, peanut farmer to president, dies at 100
EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – Jimmy Carter, the nation’s 39th president, has died. He had been in poor health and had entered hospice care on Feb. 18, 2023.
James "Jimmy" Earl Carter Jr. was 100 years old. He died Sunday, Dec. 29 at his home in Plains, Georgia, the Carter Center announced.
Carter shocked the political world with his long-shot presidential campaign in 1976.
A native of the tiny town of Plains, Georgia, he campaigned as a Washington outsider in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate and beat a field of seasoned Democratic candidates to gain the party’s nomination. He went on to defeat incumbent Republican Gerald R. Ford in the general election that fall.
After taking the oath of office, Carter, his wife Rosalynn and their then 9-year-old daughter Amy walked from the U.S. Capitol to the White House during inaugural parade. Carter said he wanted to make sure that Americans knew that he was accessible and transparent.
Carter’s single term in office was marked by high achievements and crushing defeats.
During his term from 1977 to 1981, he dealt with a poor economy including some of the highest inflation the country has ever seen, an energy crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis and a failed rescue effort of the hostages.
He also pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders on his second day in office and created federal departments of education and energy. He successfully brokered the Camp David Accords for peace in the Middle East and successfully pursued and completed the Panama Canal Treaties giving Panama control of the canal in 1999.
Also during his term, he successfully completed a second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union.
In 1980, when he ran for re-election, he was challenged by fellow Democrat Ted Kennedy. Carter eventually secured the Democratic nomination for a second term but lost to Republican Ronald Reagan in a landslide.
Since his single presidential term, Carter was known for his diplomatic and charitable efforts, including building houses for the poor with Habitat for Humanity.
He founded the Carter Center to promote and expand human rights. That earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
He was also known for being very public about his Christian faith. During an infamous interview with Playboy magazine that nearly torpedoed his 1976 presidential run, Carter said, he had “looked on a lot of women with lust” and had “committed adultery in my heart many times.”
Carter was known to pray several times a day while in the White House and had said that he was deeply influenced by a sermon he had heard when he was young: “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”
Carter had a varied career, serving as a Naval officer, running his family’s peanut business and serving as governor of Georgia, famously saying the “time of racial discrimination is over” during his inaugural address in 1971.
Carter married Rosalynn Smith in 1946 and they celebrated their 77th anniversary in July 2023. The couple had four children. They have said that they never have gone to bed arguing with each other during their married life. Rosalynn died Nov. 19, 2023, at the age of 96.
Carter was the only president in American history who completed a full term and did not appoint a Supreme Court justice.
His 43 years as an ex-president marked the longest in American history. At age 100, he was also the oldest living president as well as the nation’s longest-lived president.
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