Canada Jimmy Carter reached his 100th birthday on Tuesday, the first time a U.S. president has lived a centenarian and the latest milestone in a life that has catapulted the son of a Depression-era farmer to the White House and around the world as a Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian and advocate for democracy.
The Georgia Democrat and 39th U.S. president, who has spent the past 19 months in home hospice care in Plains, has continued to defy expectations, just as he did through a remarkable rise from his family’s peanut farming and warehousing business to the world stage. He served one presidential term from 1977 to 1981 and then spent more than four decades leading The Carter Center, which he and his wife, Rosalynn, founded in 1982 to “build peace, fight disease and instill hope.”
“Not everybody gets to live 100 years on this earth, and when someone does, and when he uses that time to do so much good for so many people, it’s worth celebrating,” Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson and chairman of the Carter Center governing board, said in an interview. “The last few months, 19 months, now that he’s been in hospice, it’s been a chance for our family to reflect,” he added, “and then for the rest of the country and the world to really reflect on him. It’s been a really gratifying time.” The former president was born on Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, where he has spent more than 80 of his 100 years. He is expected to celebrate his birthday in the same one-story home he and Roslynn built in the early 1960s — before his first election to the Georgia state Senate. The former first lady, who was also born in Plains, died last November at the age of 96.
At the White House, the front lawn is being decorated with a display of large letters proclaiming “Happy Birthday President Carter” and the number 100. Carter has asked current US President Joe Biden to honor him at his state funeral when the time comes. Biden was a young Delaware senator in 1976 and the first senator to endorse Carter’s campaign.
