Jimmy Carterthe 39th president of the United States, in office between 1977 and 1981, will turn tomorrow, October 1st 100 years becoming the first centenarian former president in American history. A milestone that the elderly Democrat is about to cross after it was feared that he was at the end of his life when, 19 months ago, he began receiving hospice care at home and interrupting hospital admissions.
In his home in Plains, Georgia, last November, his wife Eleanor Rosalynn, married 77 years earlier, passed away at the age of 96, and at his wife’s funeral Carter made one of his rare public appearances in a wheelchair, surrounded by his four children. In May, grandson Jason Carter said his grandfather was “getting close to the end.” In recent months, the former president has continued to follow current political events and has said to his family in recent months: “I’m trying to make it so I can vote for Kamala Harris” in November, according to what his nephew reported in early August.
It was again Jason who hosted the Fox Theater in Atlanta where last week a series of stars attended a concert to celebrate the 100th birthday of Georgia’s most illustrious citizen, who is four years older than the theater itself . “Not everyone makes it to 100, when someone does and uses this time to do good, we need to celebrate,” said the grandson of the former president who ran for governor in Georgia in 2014.
“This is the first time we have celebrated the 100th birthday of a president of the United States,” he said, greeting the 4,000 people who attended the concert, which will be broadcast on Tuesday by Georgia Public Broadcasting. Among the artists who performed were Angélique Kidjo of Benin, BeBe Winans and Carlene Carter, while others, including Bob Dylan and Jon Stewart, sent messages. Such messages have arrived from all the presidents still alive, except Donald Trump.
At polar opposites on an ideological level, Carter shares with Trump the fact of being one of the few American presidents not to have been re-elected to a second term, at least consecutively considering the tycoon’s new candidacy. The end of his mandate was in fact marked by the dramatic hostage crisis in the American embassy in Tehran and the tragic failure of the military operation to put an end to it. Defeated by Ronald Reagan, Carter then had a second public life thanks to the commitment of his Carter Foundation which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
From Georgia to the White House
James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924 in Plains, Georgia. After attending the naval academy, he served in the US Navy submarines immediately after the war. In 1953, his father’s premature death forced him to take the reins of the family peanut farm. Animated by a profound Baptist faith and committed to racial segregation, Carter launched himself into politics, becoming first a senator and then governor of Georgia.
In 1976 he surprisingly won the Democratic primary, despite initially being little known outside his home state. Considered an outsider, in November he narrowly defeated Gerald Ford, who had assumed the presidency after Richard Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal. Immediately after his inauguration, Carter sanctioned an unconditional pardon to all the young people who had avoided the draft so as not to fight in Vietnam, in total 100 thousand young people who had fled abroad between the sixties and seventies, 90% to Canada .
During his presidency, Carter worked to create a national energy policy and, diplomatically, pursued a policy of appeasement. Thanks to the Camp David agreements, he favored the signing of peace between Egypt and Israel in 1979. With the Soviet Union he negotiated the second round of the Salt treaty on the limitation of strategic arms. But 1979 was marked by the energy crisis and, at the end of the year, by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which plunged the world back into the climate of the Cold War.
On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the American embassy in Tehran and took 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage. It was the beginning of a dramatic crisis, which the Americans experienced as a national humiliation, even more so after the failure of a military raid to free the hostages on April 24, 1980. The Americans were released after 444 days, on January 20, 1981, by which time Carter had been dramatically defeated by Ronald Reagan in the November elections.
The president’s second life
If historians’ judgment on the Carter presidency is not always flattering, the former president then had a long second life successfully engaged in promoting international dialogue and development through his Carter Center. In this capacity he conducted peace negotiations, monitored elections, obtained the release of prisoners, supported cooperation initiatives to eradicate poverty and disease. For his commitment he obtained the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Married since 1946 to Rosalyn, Carter is the father of four children, grandfather and great-grandfather.
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