Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, has chosen to undergo hospice care and spend the rest of his life at home, the Carter Center reported Saturday. via his Twitter account. Carter, 98, is the longest-serving president in US history.
“After a series of brief hospitalizations, former President of the United States Jimmy Carter decided today to spend the rest of his time at home with his family and to seek palliative care instead of medical intervention. He has the full support of his family and medical team. The Carter family requests privacy during this time and appreciates the concern of their many fans,” the Carter Center said in a statement.
The center has not specified the conditions under which Carter will be found. The former president began treatment for brain tumors in 2015, which later resolved. In 2019, he underwent surgery to relieve pressure from brain hemorrhages he suffered after various falls. He had other complications and ailments.
Carter won the 1976 presidential election against Gerald Ford and served as president from January 1977 to January 1981. The last former President of the United States to die is George Bush Sr., who was born the same year as Carter and died in November 2018. The other living former presidents are Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, all of whom are younger than current White House resident Joe Biden, who is 80 years old. The youngest is Obama at 61, while Clinton, Bush and Trump are all three from the fifth year 1946 and aged 76.
He joined many constituents for his pledge not to deceive Americans after the Watergate fall and the United States’ defeat in Vietnam. “If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. I didn’t deserve to be your president,” Carter often said during the campaign. Carter, who came of political age during the civil rights movement, was the last Democratic presidential nominee to conquer the Deep South before the region quickly swung to Reagan and the Republicans in the ensuing election.
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The oil crisis, runaway inflation and the occupation of the embassy in Tehran all eroded the president’s popularity. He lost to Ronald Reagan overwhelmingly in 1980. Carter’s defeat was the first since Herbert Hoover’s 1932 presidency that an American-elected president running for re-election did not win a second term. He was also succeeded by George Bush Sr. and Donald Trump were presidents for one term.
In 2002 he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts, promoting democracy and human rights and promoting economic and social development, which he developed through the Center Sump. The center is a pioneer in election observation, having monitored at least 113 elections in Africa, Latin America and Asia since 1989. In perhaps its most celebrated public health initiative, the organization recently announced that in all of 2021 there were only 14 human cases of Guinea worm disease, the result of years of public health campaigns to improve access to safe drinking water in Africa. The Carter Center began leading the global eradication effort in 1986, when the parasitic disease infected 3.5 million people.
Carter, who has seldom used his full name (James Earl Carter, Jr.), was born on October 1, 1924 in Plains, Georgia. Growing peanuts, talking about politics, and devotion to the Baptist faith were the pillars of his upbringing, according to the White House in his biography. After graduating from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland in 1946, Carter married Rosalynn Smith. The Carters have three sons, John William (Jack), James Earl III (Chip) and Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff), and one daughter, Amy Lynn.
After seven years of service as a naval officer, Carter returned to the Plains. In 1962 he entered state politics and eight years later he was elected governor of Georgia. He attracted attention among the South’s new young governors for his emphasis on ecology, effective government, and the elimination of racial barriers.
Carter announced his candidacy for president in December 1974 and began a two-year campaign despite being almost unknown but gaining momentum thanks to strong primary results in early-voting states. He was nominated on the first ballot at the Democratic Convention and chose Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale as his vice presidential nominee. Carter fought hard against President Gerald Ford, who replaced Richard Nixon after resigning over Watergate. Carter won by 297 electoral or caucus votes to Ford’s 241.
On foreign policy, his defense of human rights was coldly received by the Soviet Union and some other nations. In the Middle East, he contributed to reconciliation between Egypt and Israel through the 1978 Camp David Accords. During his presidency, he achieved the ratification of the Panama Canal Treaties, returning sovereignty to Panama.
Building on the work of his predecessors, he established full diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and completed negotiations on the SALT II nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union. However, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to the suspension of plans to ratify the pact.
The final stretch of his presidency was marked by the Iran hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days beginning on November 4, 1979, when a group of Iranian students took 66 US diplomats and citizens hostage after the attack on the embassy in Tehran In the midst of the Islamist revolution.
The aftermath of America’s imprisonment by Iran, combined with continued inflation at home, contributed to Carter’s defeat in 1980. After his stunning defeat by Reagan, he continued the difficult hostage negotiations. Iran eventually released the 52 Americans the same day Carter left office.
His grandson Jason Carter, who chairs the Carter Center’s board of directors, tweeted this Saturday: “Yesterday I saw my two grandparents. They are at peace and as always their home is full of love. Thank you all for your kind words.”
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