Jimmy Carter Emerges First Ex-US President to Mark 100th Birthday

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States yesterday turned 100 years old, emerging the first former commander-in-chief of the country to achieve the major feat.

He is expected to spend his special birthday in the same one-story home he’s lived in since the early 1960s in Plains, Georgia, Los Angeles News said.

“Not everybody gets 100 years on this earth, and when somebody does, and when they use that time to do so much good for so many people, it’s worth celebrating,” Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson and chair of The Carter Center governing board, said in an interview with The Associated Press

Carter held the highest office in the country from 1977 to 1981. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work as a global humanitarian in mediating international conflicts and advancing human rights.

“Because we are free, we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere,” Carter said in his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1977. “Our moral sense dictates a clear-cut preference for those societies which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights,” he added.

The legacy of the 39th president in U.S. history has been written, rewritten and rewritten again.

By the end of his tenure, Carter had increased the U.S. workforce by creating eight million new jobs. Unfortunately, the president’s one term was marred by inflation and interest rates that hit near record highs in the late 1970s before eventually leading to a short recession.

Carter was an early environmentalist who pushed to expand the national park system to include protection of 103 million acres of Alaskan lands.

Additionally, he was a leader who carried a passion for better human and social services. As president, he created the Department of Education, bolstered the Social Security system, and appointed record numbers of women, Blacks and Latinos to Government jobs.

Critics would be quick to point to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as an area where Carter failed as president.

The invasion caused the suspension of plans for ratification of the SALT II pact, with the seizure as hostages of the United States embassy staff in Iran dominating the news during the last 14 months of Carter’s administration.

Carter’s defeat to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election was viewed as a bit of an inevitability as Iran continued holding Americans captive, combined with continuing inflation at home.

Despite how historians might remember the conflict in Iran, Carter continued the difficult negotiations over the hostages.

Forty-three years is a lot of time, and Carter — the first president to go by his nickname of “Jimmy” — took full advantage of his position both domestically and abroad.

In 1982, he founded the Carter Centre with the purpose of advancing human rights in more than 80 countries.

Working hand-in-hand with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Carter Centre helped reduce the number of estimated global cases of Guinea worm disease from 3.5 million in 1986 to four through September 2004.

He was also instrumental in founding the New Baptist Covenant and served as an honorary chair on the World Justice Project.

Outside of his humanitarian activities, Carter’s diplomatic efforts began in the Middle East in the early 1980s. He was eventually sent as far as east as North Korea and Taiwan in the 1990s.

The next decade saw Carter in Africa where he visited Darfur and Sudan before joining Nelson Mandela in South Africa to help unveil a group of independent global leaders called, The Elders. He also taught Sunday School for decades at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains.

The former president has been in hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia, since February 2023. At age 90, Carter was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma — skin cancer that had spread to his liver and brain. He also suffered several falls, breaking his hip in May 2019 before fracturing his pelvis later that year. He had hip replacement surgery in his mid-90s.

He was also admitted for brain bleeding suffered after falls. Carter’s declining health has taken him away from life-long hobbies like fly fishing and woodwork; however, according to his grandson, he still has plans to vote in this year’s election.