Former President Jimmy Carter, the longest-lived president in American history at 98, has entered home hospice care in Plains, Georgia, The Carter Center confirmed in a statement released Saturday.
The statement said Carter, after a series of short hospital stays, "decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention." It added that the 39th president has the full support of his medical team and family. The family asks for privacy and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers.
Jason Carter, the couple's grandson and chair of The Carter Center governing board, posted on Twitter on Saturday that he "saw both of my grandparents yesterday. They are at peace and, as always, their home is full of love." Carter's wife, Rosalynn, is 95.
Carter was a little-known Georgia governor when he launched his presidential bid ahead of the 1976 election. He defeated President Gerald R. Ford by presenting himself as a Washington outsider in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that forced Richard Nixon from office in 1974. A frequent line on the campaign trail was his pledge: "If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don't vote for me."
His single term was turbulent. Double-digit inflation, gasoline lines and the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran fractured his electoral coalition. Eight Americans died in a failed rescue attempt in April 1980, and Republican Ronald Reagan beat him in a landslide that year. Carter also faced a damaging primary challenge from Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.
His record included brokering Middle East peace by keeping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the bargaining table for 13 days in 1978. At home, he partially deregulated the airline, railroad and trucking industries, created the departments of Education and Energy and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and designated millions of acres in Alaska as national parks or wildlife refuges.
After the defeat, Carter built a second act through The Carter Center, which he and Rosalynn opened in 1982. His work there earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. The center has monitored at least 113 elections in Africa, Latin America and Asia since 1989, and has led the global campaign against Guinea worm disease. When the effort began in 1986, the parasite infected 3.5 million people. Only 14 human cases were reported in all of 2021. Carter once said he hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite.
Born Oct. 1, 1924, in rural south Georgia, Carter attended the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a Navy officer before returning to Plains to run the family peanut business. He traveled widely into his 80s and early 90s, including annual Habitat for Humanity trips, but his health declined in recent years, and the coronavirus pandemic limited his public appearances. In August 2015, doctors removed a small cancerous mass from his liver, and he announced the next year that an experimental drug had eliminated any sign of cancer.
Reflecting on his life at the time of that diagnosis, Carter said: "I'm perfectly at ease with whatever comes. I've had an exciting, adventurous, and gratifying existence."
