Former President Jimmy Carter has died after deciding nearly two years ago to forgo further medical care following a series of medical crises, according to two people close to the family. At 100, he was the longest-lived president in American history and became known as much for his post-presidential diplomacy and charitable works as for his single, economically turbulent term in office.
Carter, a peanut farmer and former Naval officer who served aboard submarines and studied nuclear physics, was elected governor of Georgia as a Democrat in 1970. With a promise never to lie to the American public, Carter positioned himself as the reformist antidote to an era of deep political mistrust after Watergate and the Vietnam War and won the presidency in 1976.
He presided over four tumultuous years plagued by long gas lines, high inflation and the Iran hostage crisis. But he also signed a strategic arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union and helped forge the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. Carter cemented his legacy with a deeper engagement in public affairs than any other former president of modern times and was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
(Paul Fraughton | The Salt Lake Tribune) Former President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter talk to a group of invited guests at the Snowbird Resort's Cliff Lodge in 2003.
Chip Carter, the former president’s son, said in a statement his father was a hero to “everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love.” He added, “The world is our family because of the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”
Here is what to know:
• Carter — who survived a series of health crises in recent years, including a bout with melanoma that spread to his liver and brain — entered hospice care in February 2023. But the farmer-turned-president once again defied expectations, and his staying power even in hospice captured the imagination of many admirers around the world.
• As Carter’s health declined, a former Texas politician came forward claiming that he took part in a 1980 tour of the Middle East with a clandestine agenda to sabotage Carter’s re-election campaign.
• In November 2023, Carter’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, died at age 96, two days after the Carter Center, the nonprofit the coupled founded in Atlanta in 1982, said she had entered hospice care at home. Theirs was one of the great love stories in American politics — they were married for nearly eight decades and weathered the coronavirus pandemic together in the modest house they built in Plains, his hometown.
• Carter’s funeral will be the first for a former U.S. president since that of George H.W. Bush in 2018, which Carter attended alongside four of his successors: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
