Jimmy Carter, 39th U.S. president and humanitarian, dies

ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter, who went from little-known Georgia governor to the White House, died Sunday at age 100.

Carter, who lived longer than any other U.S. president, had entered home hospice care in February.

His wife, Rosalynn Carter, died Nov. 19, 2023, just days after entering home hospice. She was living with dementia and had suffered through many months of declining health.

The Carters were married for more than 77 years, making American history as the longest-married presidential couple.

In the 1976 election, he defeated incumbent President Gerald R. Ford, capitalizing as a Washington outsider in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that drove Richard Nixon from office in 1974.

Carter served a single, tumultuous term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980, a landslide loss that ultimately paved the way for his decades of global advocacy for democracy, public health and human rights via The Carter Center.

The Carters opened the center in 1982. His work there garnered a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

In the White House, she was her husband’s closest adviser, a role that continued through their four decades as global humanitarians.

The Carters forged what they both described as a “full partnership.” Unlike many previous first ladies, Rosalynn sat in on Cabinet meetings, spoke out on controversial issues and represented her husband on foreign trips. Aides to President Carter sometimes referred to her — privately — as “co-president.”

“Rosalynn is my best friend ... the perfect extension of me, probably the most influential person in my life,” Jimmy Carter told aides during their White House years, which spanned from 1977-1981.

The Carters volunteered for decades with Habitat for Humanity, beginning in 1984 and continuing until 2020.

Carter, who has lived most of his life in Plains, Georgia, the tiny town where he and his wife were born in the years between World War I and the Great Depression.

He traveled extensively into his 80s and early 90s, including annual trips to build homes with Habitat for Humanity and frequent trips abroad as part of the Carter Center’s election monitoring and its effort to eradicate the Guinea worm parasite in developing countries.

But the former president’s health declined over his 10th decade of life, especially as the coronavirus pandemic limited his public appearances, including at his beloved Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School lessons for decades before standing-room-only crowds of visitors.

In August 2015, Carter had a small cancerous mass removed from his liver. The following year, Carter announced he needed no further treatment, as an experimental drug had eliminated any sign of cancer.