Today, former President Jimmy Carter turns 100 years old. His plan is to at least stay alive until he can vote for fellow party member Kamala Harris. It can also be longer.
Nineteen months ago, it looked like Carter had at most weeks and perhaps only days to live. His cancer therapy was stopped. From now on, he would only receive terminal home care. Media (including Knack) prepared an in memoriam. In the following weeks I visited the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta. The woman who shows visitors around was not concerned about the medical news. “He never dies,” she predicted. She didn’t mean that in religious terms. “He’s too stubborn to die,” she added. It was one of the many facets of him that she admired.
At that time, Carter was already by far the oldest living former US president. His closest rival was Republican George Herbert Bush, who at 94ste died.
He was president between 1977 and 1981 – a time of crisis and doubt, which opened the way for a move to the right under successor Ronald Reagan.
The remarkable thing about Carter was that he regained his good name after his presidency. He campaigned for democracy and human rights, he rolled up his sleeves to build cheap housing, he supervised potentially fraudulent elections, he continued to campaign for peace in one of the areas where he had achieved success: the Middle East , where he had helped broker the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel.
Nine years ago he announced that his skin cancer had spread to the liver and brain.
He successfully received immunotherapy, which was relatively new at the time.
It was not further explained why he stopped all therapy in February last year. He had been hospitalized several times. The notice only specified that he was suffering from a terminal illness.
In November 2023, his wife Rosalynn, who turned 96, died. Jimmy, in a wheelchair and with a blanket over his lap, attended the funeral.
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According to visitors, his condition is ‘stable’.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionthe newspaper Carter reads at home, described his day in a recent article. At half past six in the morning, son Chip comes along, who keeps him company for a large part of the day. His dad sleeps a lot, he says, is confined to a wheelchair and goes to bed around half past seven in the evening. That’s too early to see his favorite baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, in action. The matches are recorded and played back the following day. It is often only towards evening that the match has been fully watched. In between, the ex-president watches black and white films and old series such as Perry Mason in Matlock. And he followed the Democratic Convention with great attention. He told Chip that he wants to stay alive long enough to vote for Kamala Harris so she can become the first female president of the US. It will be the twentieth time that he has cast his vote in a presidential election.
“He doesn’t think Donald Trump should be president again,” Chip said.
Chip monitors his news consumption so that foreign news is limited, especially news about the Middle East: ‘He really feels bad about what’s happening there. He still thinks he could help.”
Sometimes he wants to talk, sometimes he wants to be silent. Sometimes he is in a bad mood, at other times he shows his disarming smile, a broad smile that served him as a politician.
How will he celebrate his centenary?
Dozens of family members come to visit. And at half past twelve, military planes will fly over his home in Plains.
