Former President Jimmy Carter, who was turned out of office by voters after one term and went on to build houses for the poor and champion democracy around the world, died Sunday. He was 100 and the longest-living US president. His son said Carter died at his home in Plains, Georgia, the Washington Post reports. His wife, Rosalynn, to whom he was married for more than 77 years, had died in November 2023, and Carter made his final public appearance at her memorial service. Among his last appeals to his country was in an op-ed after the attack on the US Capitol in 2021. "Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss," Carter warned, adding, "Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late."
Born Oct. 1, 1924, Carter was the eldest of four children and grew up in a house without running water or electricity. His family had a peanut farm two miles from Plains. When he was 19, Carter entered the Naval Academy, then became one of the first officers assigned to its nuclear submarine program under future Adm. Hyman Rickover, who drove his staff hard and didn't believe in praise. "I think, second to my own father, Rickover had more effect on my life than any other man," Carter said. He returned to Plains and the family business when his father died, per the New York Times. Although he called himself a peanut farmer when he entered politics in the early 1960s, his father had expanded and diversified as he prospered, and Carter ran a significant commercial enterprise by that time.
Carter was elected a state legislator, then governor, shaking up Georgia politics by declaring, "The time for racial discrimination is over." He served one term but built a political team with an eye on the presidency. In 1976, he ousted President Gerald Ford, who later became a close friend, to become the nation's 39th president. He had run as a moderate Democrat and born-again Southern Baptist who promised to never lie to Americans, drawing contrasts to the recently resigned Richard Nixon. He also brought technocratic plans to make government more efficient, per the AP. Carter had successes in office that included a landmark treaty in the Middle East. But his support faded under the weight of double-digit inflation and the taking of US hostages in Iran, and he lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan.
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His presidency has risen in historians' estimation recently, but it was Carter's work after he left office that was most widely admired. He won the Nobel Peace Prize and hammered nails alongside his wife as they built homes for Habitat for Humanity. The couple founded the Carter Center in Atlanta, under which they traveled the world to promote peace, democracy, and humanitarian efforts. "I thought he was a great president because he was a president of values, and he acted upon the values," former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once said. "He went from the White House to building houses for poor people. He glorified that work. Others wanted to do it because he did it," she added. "That's powerful." (More Jimmy Carter stories.)
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