‘Legacy of service, kindness and generosity’: Former US President Jimmy Carter dies

Winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize and 39th president of the United States Jimmy Carter died Sunday peacefully at his home in Plains, Ga., surrounded by his family.

He was 100 years old — the first president to reach that age and longest-lived president in the nation’s history.

Carter was actually the first U.S. president to be born in a hospital.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawai‘i Democrat, joined the nation Sunday in mourning the former president’s death.

“As president, he worked to protect the environment, expand clean energy, champion human rights and advance Middle East peace,” said Schatz in a statement. “After leaving office, he spent decades helping the less fortunate, in America and around the world. His legacy of service, kindness and generosity will live on. My deepest condolences go out to the entire Carter family.”

Carter is survived by his children, Jack, Chip, Jeff and Amy, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his wife Rosalynn and one grandchild.

“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights and unselfish love,” said Carter’s son Chip Carter in an announcement from The Carter Center. “My brothers, sister and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. 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.”

The Carter Center is the nonprofit founded by the former president and his wife that seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy and improve health around the globe.

“Today Hawai‘i joins the nation and the world in mourning the passing of President Jimmy Carter, a leader whose life was defined by service, compassion and an unwavering commitment to justice and peace,” said Hawai‘i Gov. Josh Green in a statement.

The governor added that the former president’s legacy extends far beyond his time in office.

“His tireless efforts for human rights, global diplomacy and humanitarian causes exemplify the values of aloha that we hold so dear in Hawai‘i,” wrote Green. “Through his work, he reminded us all of the power of humility, kindness and a deep care for others.”

Final arrangements for Carter’s state funeral, including all public events and motorcade routes, are pending. Public observances in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., are planned, followed by a private interment in Plains.

The schedule will be released by the Joint Task Force-National Capital Region once finalized.

“Faith, hope, service. These will always define President Jimmy Carter,” said U.S. Rep. Ed Case, a Hawai‘i Democrat. “Faith in God and humanity. Hope for our country and world and for each and all of us. Service as the purpose of life, each in our own best way. His was truly a life of consequence.”

Members of the public are encouraged to visit the official Carter tribute website for the online condolence book as well as biographical materials commemorating his life.

The Carter family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to The Carter Center, 453 John Lewis Freedom Parkway N.E., Atlanta, GA 30307.

“Today, America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian,” said a joint statement by U.S. President Joe Biden and his wife First Lady Jill Biden, who had the honor of calling the former president a friend for more than 60 years.

Carter was receiving hospice care since early 2023 at his home in Plains, where he lived with his wife of 77 years before she died in November 2023 at the age of 96.

The Georgia native and Democrat grew up on a peanut farm.

He graduated in 1946 from the U.S. Naval Academy, marrying 19-year-old childhood friend Rosalynn Smith the same year, and became a submariner in the Navy, where he was assigned to Schenectady, N.Y., as an aide to Adm. Hyman Rickover.

The Carter family relocated there while the future president studied nuclear reactor technology and nuclear physics at Union Graduate College. Carter eventually became a senior officer on the USS Seawolf, the second U.S. nuclear submarine.

A Hawai‘i News Now story says he actually lived in Hawai‘i during part of his Navy service in the later 1940s.

Carter and his wife also came to Honolulu in Februray 1984 and visited ʻIolani Palace.

He left the Navy in 1953 and the family returned ot Georgia after the death of his father so he could run the family peanut business.

That’s when he became prominent in politics, first in church addresses and then as chairman of the Sumter County School Board. Carter was elected in 1962 as a Democrat to the Georgia Senate during a special election.

He served two terms before running an unsuccessful campaign for Georgia governor in 1966. Carter tried again in 1970 and became Georgia’s 76th top executive Jan. 12, 1971.

He was elected president in 1976, defeating Republican incumbent Gerald Ford in the aftermath of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Carter served one term before losing re-election in 1980, marred by the Iran hostage crisis, to actor Ronald Reagan.

He spent more than 40 years focusing on good works that made him a revered figure — the greatest U.S. ex-president — in sharp contrast to his low popularity when he left the White House in 1981 at only 56 years old.

Carter almost became synonymous with hoisting beams and pounding nails at sites where nonprofit Habitat for Humanity was building homes for disadvantaged people.

He is recognized worldwide for tireless efforts promoting peace and advancing democracy, human rights and social justice, primarily through The Carter Center, which was established in 1982.

“Jimmy Carter was a good president, but a great man, whose life was marked by an unwavering commitment to service, humanity and peace,” said Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association Chairman and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis in a statement.

In 1978, as president, Carter brokered the Camp David Accords, a historic peace deal between Israel and Egypt that capped 16 months of negotiations.

His administration is also credited by many historians with being at the forefront of events that would lead to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Carter and his national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski put Moscow on the ideological defnsive by using human rights, and their forceful support for the Solidarity movement in Poland helped fuel a revolutionary wave in Eastern Europe that eventually sparked the fall of communism.

Carter secured the release of journalist Luis Mora and labor leader José Altamirano in 1986 from prison in Nicaragua. He traveled to North Korea in 1994 at the request of then-U.S. President Bill Clinton and soon after announced the “treaty of understanding” with then-North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.

Clinton and his wife former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who met Carter in 1975, expressed their mourning for the former president’s death in a statement Sunday afternoon, commemorating Carter’s commitment to civil rights, environmental conservation and his efforts to broker peace internationally.

“Guided by his faith, President Carter lived to serve others — until the very end,” wrote the Clintons, according to an NBC News story. “I will always be proud to have presented the Medal of Freedom to him and Rosalynn in 1999, and to have worked with him in the years after he left the White House.”

Carter is also credited with helping ease violence in 1996 by negotiating between Egypt and Tunisia, and he played a crucial part of brokering the Nairobi Agreement in 1999 that ended the war between Sudan and Uganda.

The former president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts” and his “outstanding commitment to human rights.”

“With his compassion and moral clarity, he worked to eradicate disease, forge peace, advance civil rights and human rights, promote free and fair elections, house the homeless and always advocate for the least among us,” said the Bidens in their statement. “He saved, lifted and changed the lives of people all across the globe.”

Throughout Carter’s busy post-presidency, as always, his faith and his humble roots remained his guides.

“When I got through being governor, I went back to Plains,” he told the congregation of his hometown church Maranatha Baptist Church in August 2015, according to the NBC News story. “When I got through being president, I went back to Plains, and now no matter where we are in the world, you look forward to getting back home to Plains.”

He was diagnosed in 2015 with melanoma, a form of skin cancer, that spread to his liver and brain, and underwent experimental treatment with the immunotherapy drug Keytruda.

A few months later, Carter announced doctors ended his treatments after finding no tumors.

He spent much of the second half of 2019 in the hospital for brain surgery, infections and two falls that resulted in a broken hip and pelvis.

But Carter was back teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church just 2 weeks after fracturing his pelvis, telling the congregation at the time that since doctors told him in 2015 cancer had spread to his brain, he was “absolutely and completely at ease with death.”

President Biden wished Carter a happy 100th birtday in October in a direct-to-camera message shared with CBS News: “Mr. President, you’ve always been a moral force for our nation and the world. … You’re a voice of courage, conviction, compassion and most of all, a beloved friend of Jill and me and our family.”

Former U.S. President George W. Bush hailed Carter as a man of deeply held convictions.

“President Carter dignified the office,” Bush said on social media, according to a story by The Center Square. “His efforts to leave behind a better world didn’t end with the presidency. His work with Habitat for Humanity and The Carter Center set an example of service that will inspire Americans for generations.”

Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones said in the same story that Carter exemplified what it meant to be a public servant. He will never forget the day he had the honor of meeting the former president and first lady.

“They were kind, wonderful, accepting and exactly what they portrayed every day,” said Jones, “two people devoted to lifting up those in their community who needed help the most.”

The Bidens urged anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning — “the good life” — to study their friend and former president, who was a man of principle, faith and humility.

“He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people — decent and honorable, courageous and compassionate, humble and strong,” they wrote.

News reporter Nathan Christophel contributed to this story.