Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States, was admitted to a home hospice

ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter, who at 98 is the longest-lived American president, has entered a home hospice in Plains, Georgia, the Carter Center said in a statement confirmed Saturday.

The statement said that after a series of brief hospitalizations, Carter “decided to spend the rest of his time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.”

The 39th President has the full support of his medical team and family, who “request privacy at this time and are grateful for the care shown by his many fans,” the statement said.

Carter was an obscure governor of Georgia when he launched his bid for the presidency ahead of the 1976 election. He then defeated then-President Gerald R. Ford, capitalizing on being Washington’s underdog after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that ousted Richard Nixon in 1974.

Carter served one tumultuous term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980, a crushing defeat that ultimately paved the way for his decades of global advocacy for democracy, public health, and human rights through the Carter Center.

The former president and his 95-year-old wife Rosalyn opened the center in 1982. His work there was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Jason Carter, the couple’s grandson who now chairs the governing board of the Carter Center, tweeted Saturday that he “saw both my grandparents yesterday. They are at peace and, as always, their home is full of love.”

Carter, who has lived most of his life on the plains, traveled extensively in his 80s and early 90s, including annual home-building trips with Habitat for Humanity and frequent trips abroad as part of the Carter Center’s election monitoring and efforts to eradication of Guinea. helminthiases in developing countries. But the former president’s health has taken a turn for the worse in his 10 years, especially as the coronavirus pandemic has limited his public appearances, including at his beloved Maranatha Baptist Church, where he spent decades teaching Sunday school classes to crowds of stand-up attendees.

In August 2015, Carter had a small cancerous mass removed from his liver. The following year, Carter announced that he did not need further treatment, as the experimental drug had eliminated all signs of cancer.

Carter celebrated his final birthday in October with family and friends in Plains, the tiny town where he and Rosaleen were born in the years between World War I and the Great Depression.

Last year, the Carter Center celebrated 40 years of advancing its human rights agenda.

The Center has been a pioneer in election observation, observing at least 113 elections in Africa, Latin America and Asia since 1989. In perhaps its most widely acclaimed public health effort, the organization recently announced that only 14 human cases of guinea worm have been reported. reported throughout 2021, the result of years of public health campaigns to improve access to safe drinking water in Africa.

This is a staggering drop from when the Carter Center led the global eradication effort in 1986, when the parasitic disease infected 3.5 million people. One day, Carter said he hoped to live longer than the last guinea worm parasite.

Carter was born October 1, 1924 to a prominent family in rural South Georgia. He entered the United States Naval Academy during World War II and pursued a career as a Cold War naval officer before returning to Plains, Georgia with Rosaleen and their young family to take over the family’s peanut business after Earl Carter’s death in the 1950s.

A moderate Democrat, the younger Carter quickly rose from the local school board to the state Senate and then to the office of Georgia governor. He began his White House bid as an outsider with a big smile, outspoken Baptist morals, and political agendas that reflected his engineering background. He contacted many Americans because of his promise not to deceive the American people after Nixon’s disgrace and the US defeat in Southeast Asia.

“If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. I wouldn’t deserve to be your president,” Carter often said during his campaign.

Carter, who came of age politically during the civil rights movement, was the last Democratic presidential candidate to take over the Deep South before the region quickly fell to Reagan and the Republicans in subsequent elections.

He ruled amid Cold War pressures, turbulent oil markets, and social upheaval over racism, women’s rights, and America’s global role.

Carter’s foreign policy victories included brokering peace in the Middle East when, in 1978, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin stayed at the negotiating table for 13 days. This experience at Camp David inspired the post-presidential center where Carter established so much of his legacy. At home, Carter partially deregulated air travel, railroads, and trucking, and created the departments of education and energy, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He designated millions of acres in Alaska as national parks or wildlife sanctuaries. He appointed a then-record number of women and non-whites to federal office. He never had a nomination to the Supreme Court, but elevated civil rights lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the nation’s second highest court, granting her a promotion in 1993.

Carter also built on Nixon’s opening with China, and although he tolerated autocrats in Asia, pushed Latin America from dictatorship to democracy.

However, Carter’s electoral coalition was shattered by double-digit inflation, gas lines and the 444-day Iran hostage crisis. His darkest hour came when, in April 1980, eight Americans were killed in a failed hostage rescue operation that helped him achieve a crushing defeat.

In the years following his defeat, Carter largely withdrew from electoral politics. The Democrats hesitated to accept it. The Republicans made him a highlight by caricaturing an unlucky liberal. In reality, Carter ruled more like a technocrat, more progressive on racial and gender equality than he campaigned, but a budget hawk who often angered more liberal Democrats, including Ted Kennedy, a Massachusetts senator who fought a devastating primary battle against the incumbent. president in 1980.

Carter said after leaving office that he underestimated the importance of engaging with Washington’s influential people, including the media and lobbying forces anchored in the nation’s capital. But he insisted that his overall approach was sound and that he had achieved his main goals of “protecting the security and interests of our country peacefully” and “strengthening human rights here and abroad” – even though he clearly did not a second term was enough.

And years later, when he was diagnosed with cancer at the age of ten, he expressed satisfaction with his long life.

“I am completely calm about what is happening,” he said in 2015. “I have had an exciting, adventurous and enjoyable existence.”