Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100, almost two years after announcing he would spend his final days in hospice care.
His son Chip Carter, 74, confirmed the former president died in his Georgia home on Sunday around 3:40 p.m. ET.
The former Democratic president, who was a peanut farmer, completed one term in the White House and spent the rest of his life devoted to charitable causes. In February 2023, he made the decision to forgo further medical treatment and instead entered hospice care following a series of hospital visits.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner lived out his final years in Plains, Georgia.
He had beloved wife of 77 years Rosalynn by his side until her passing on November 19, 2023 at the age of 96.
One of his last public appearances took place on his 100th birthday on October 1 at his residence in Georgia, where he was joined by his family and close friends, while seated in a wheelchair.
The Democrat also was also able to cast his vote in the 2024 election.
Last year, he attended his wife’s funeral alongside former first ladies including Michelle Obama and Melania Trump.
Rosalynn was diagnosed with dementia and spent her remaining days with her husband at home with regular trips from beloved family members.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100 after announcing earlier this year he would live out his final days in hospice care
Carter’s time as president was marked by challenges such as the oil crisis, which led to long lines at gas stations, and the prolonged Iran hostage crisis that persisted until the final moments of his presidency, when Ronald Reagan took office.
But the Navy veteran’s dedication to philanthropy meant he quickly became one of the most beloved figures in American politics.
The Carter Center announced February 18 that the former president had made the decision to decline ‘additional medical intervention’ and move to his home for end-of-life care following a ‘series of short hospital stays.’
The statement, however, did not elaborate on what conditions had prompted the recent hospital visits.
Carter lived for a year and two months after deciding to decline additional medical help.
With Carter’s death, there are now only five living presidents – Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden.
Carter battled a few health issues over the years, but for a man in his 90s was relatively spry, continuing his work building homes with Habitat for Humanity well into his later years.
In August 2015, he was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma and had a small cancerous mass removed from his liver. It also spread to his brain.
The following year, about six months after the diagnosis, Carter announced that he needed no further treatment, as an experimental drug had eliminated any sign of cancer.
Carter decided to receive hospice care and ‘spend his remaining time at home with his family’ instead of additional medical intervention, the Carter Center said. Carter is pictured in 2018 with wife Rosalynn. The two were married for 77 years before Rosalynn’s passing at the age of 96 on November 19, 2023
Carter is pictured in a wheelchair at his wife Rosalynn’s funeral services in Plains, Georgia on November 29, 2023 after she passed while receiving hospice care at their home at the age of 96 on November 19
Carter was married to Rosalynn for 77 years before her death on November 19, 2023 at their home in Plains, Georgia. Pictured: Carter attends his wife’s tribute service in Atlanta on November 28, 2023
A few years later, in 2019, when Carter was 95, he helped build a home in Nashville for Habitat for Humanity.
Only a handful of former presidents have lived past 90 years, including Ronald Reagan, Carter’s successor, who lived to be 93.
Carter’s grandson Jason tweeted in February that he visited his grandparents, saying they ‘are at peace and — as always — their home is full of love.’
The Secret Service also sent a moving message to Carter in February, wishing him well after it was announced he was receiving hospice care.
‘Rest easy Mr. President,’ tweeted the Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi following the announcement of his condition.
‘We will be forever by your side.’
Carter, a Navy veteran and Nobel Peace Prize winner, became the 39th U.S. president when he defeated Gerald R. Ford in 1976.
At the time, the country was still reeling from the Watergate scandal under President Richard Nixon.
He served a single term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Jimmy Carter during his 1977-81 presidency, protected by the Secret Service
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill visited Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter at their Plains, Georgia, home in May, 2021. While the couple remained neutral during the 2020 Democratic primary, they urged the election of Biden, who was a young senator from Delaware when Carter won the presidency in 1976
Carter continued work building homes with Habitat for Humanity well into his later years. The former president is pictured in 2018 during the first day of the week-long Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project
Carter and his wife Rosalynn are pictured in their hometown of Plains, Georgia, in August 2018, with two Secret Service agents following them
Carter committed himself to philanthropy post-presidency, living a humble life with his wife, his four children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Despite receding from public view due to health issues in later life, he remained a quiet force in politics at home and, through The Carter Center, in public health and human rights advocacy around the world.
The Carters founded the Carter Center in 1982, two years after he lost his re-election bid to Reagan.
He remained neutral in the Democrats’ 2020 presidential primary, but fielded calls and visits from multiple candidates.
He and Rosalynn recorded audio addresses for the Democrats’ virtual national convention, urging the election of nominee Joe Biden, who was a young senator from Delaware when Carter won the presidency in 1976.
‘Joe Biden was my first and most effective supporter in the Senate,’ Carter told the convention in 2020. ‘For decades, he’s been my loyal and dedicated friend.’
Perhaps most notable among Carter’s 2020 election maneuvering was the Carter Center’s designating the United States as a ‘backsliding’ democracy.
The Center announced after the Democratic convention that it would devote resources to ensuring free and fair U.S. elections.
James Earl Carter Jr was born on October 1, 1924 in Plains, Georgia, a town that now has a population of around 573. Jimmy, as he would be called, was raised on his family’s peanut farm. He is pictured in 1937 with his pet dog Bozo
While on military leave back home in Plains, Carter went on a date with 17-year-old Rosalynn Smith. He had known Rosalynn since she was a child because she was friends with his sister Ruth. The next morning, he told his mother: ‘She’s the one I’m going to marry.’ Above, the couple on their wedding day on July 7, 1946
Jimmy Carter waves in front of the crowd at the Democratic Convention of 1980. He became president in 1976 but did not win re-election for a second term in 1980
Carter lost to Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election. Reagan (left) and first lady Nancy Reagan join Carter (right) and Rosalynn at the Carter Center in October 1986
Siding with Biden over former President Donald Trump wasn’t a surprising step for a Democratic former president, but it did involve Carter ignoring one of his own recent observations about the presidency – age.
Weeks before his 95th birthday, Carter alluded to the advanced ages of several candidates at the time.
‘I hope there’s an age limit,’ Carter said jovially at his town hall when asked whether he’d run again.
Then he turned more serious: ‘If I were just 80 years old, if I was 15 years younger, I don’t believe I could undertake the duties I experienced when I was president.’
The announcement of Carter’s condition in February came just one day after a building at the US Naval Academy was renamed in his honor.
The building had previously been named after a leader in the Confederate Navy, but was renamed in honor of Carter, who graduated from the academy in 1946.
The decision to rename the engineering building in Annapolis was made after a commission mandated by Congress determined several military assets across all branches of the service had to be renamed because of Confederate ties.
The building that had been called Maury Hall was built and named in the early 1900s after Matthew Fontaine Maury, a naval officer and scientist who joined the Confederates.
The Naval Academy superintendent’s house and a nearby road are named after Franklin Buchanan, the academy’s first superintendent who left to join the Confederate Navy at the start of the Civil War. The academy is also renaming the house and road, but has yet to announce those changes.
Carter did not attend the ceremony, though some of his relatives did.
Carter remained neutral in Democrats’ 2020 presidential primary, but he fielded calls and visits from multiple candidates including Pete Buttigieg, pictured, in May 2019
President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter dance at a White House Congressional Ball in 1977. The couple celebrated 77 years of marriage in July this year
Former first ladies Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton attended Rosalynn’s funeral service
‘It would be impossible to overstate what this Academy and the Navy has meant to my grandfather, and by extension to my family,’ said Josh Carter, Jimmy Carter’s grandson, in a news release from the Navy at the time of renaming.
Friends and admirers of the former president, who served from 1977-91, sent their best wishes to the beloved elder statesman in remembrance of his life and accomplishments.
Carter was born on October 1, 1924, with the rarely-used full name James Earl Carter, Jr. and was raised during the Great Depression.
The son of a Georgia peanut farmer, he said that farming, talk of politics, and devotion to the Baptist faith were pillars of his upbringing.
Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1946 and married Rosalynn Smith shortly afterward.
The couple had three sons – John William (Jack), James Earl III (Chip), Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff) – and a daughter, Amy Lynn. They also had 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. Their grandson Jeremy Davis Carter died of a heart attack at the age of 28 in 2015.
Rosalynn passed away Sunday, November 19 at 2:10pm at her home in Plains, Georgia. The former first lady was a passionate champion of mental health, caregiving and women’s rights.
A statement from the Carter Center on her death noted: ‘She died peacefully, with family by her side.’
She was honored with a wreath-laying at her namesake medical center in Americus, Georgia, followed by her casket lying in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta.
The next day on November 28, 2023, U.S. leaders and politicians gathered with Jimmy Carter for her funeral at Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
In attendance were President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden and former President and first lady Bill and Hillary Clinton – as well as past first ladies Melania Trump, Michelle Obama and Laura Bush.
On November 29, the Carter family held a more personal funeral service for Rosalynn at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia where former President Carter attended in a wheelchair.
Jimmy Carter served seven years as a Naval Officer before returning to Georgia, where he entered state politics in 1962.
Eight years later, he was elected governor of Georgia.
He launched a bid for the White House in 1974 and built momentum over the next two years.
While president, he established two new cabinet-level departments: the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.
He installed solar panels on the roof of the White House – only for Reagan to take them down.
Both during and after his presidency, he became known as an international human rights champion.
Carter was at the forefront of brokering the Camp David Accords between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1978. He also saw the start of the Iran hostage crisis as well as the first efforts toward developing an energy independence policy.
His decision in 1980 to authorize a military rescue of the American hostages in Iran contributed to his reelection loss that year.
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 after he created the Carter Center to promote human rights worldwide.
He also spent time post-presidency building Habitat for Humanity homes, and writing more than two dozen books.
Two years after a cancer diagnosis in 2015, Carter was hospitalized for dehydration while building homes in Canada.
He was back at the work site the next day.
Carter has also traveled the world for elections and worked with the Carter Center to eradicate diseases.
His Center began to work toward the eradication of Guinea worm disease in 1986, when 3.5 million people were afflicted. In 2022, only 54 were diagnosed, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
And in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Guatemala, the Center established a river blindness eradication program, which helped eliminate the condition.
