CNN
—

Former President Jimmy Carter, a Georgia peanut farmer who promised to restore morality and truth to politics after an era of scandal in the White House and who redefined the office after becoming president, died Sunday at age 100.

The Carter Center said the 39th president died in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family.

According to a Biden administration official, the White House has been informed that Carter has died. According to a police official, preparations for the state funeral have begun.

Carter had been in home hospice care since February 2023 after a series of brief hospital stays.

Carter, a Democrat, served a single term from 1977 to 1981 and lost re-election to Ronald Reagan. Despite his notable achievements as a peacemaker, Carter’s presidency is largely remembered as an unfulfilling four years rocked by setbacks to the American economy and reputation abroad. His most lasting legacy, however, may be his work as a world-traveling elder statesman and human rights pioneer during a tireless 43-year “retirement.”

Carter became the oldest living former president when he surpassed the late George H. W. Bush’s record in March 2019.

Carter’s beloved wife, Rosalynn, died in November 2023. They had been inseparable during their 77-year marriage, and after her death, the former president said in a statement, “As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew someone who loved and supported me .”

The former president attended memorial events for his wife, including a private funeral and a televised memorial service in Atlanta, where he sat in the front row in a reclined wheelchair. He didn’t comment on it.

Carter took office in 1977 with a solemn promise to lead a government that was “as good and honest and decent and compassionate and full of love as the American people,” after the Democratic Party’s nomination initially seemed like an unlikely long shot.

The southerner with the radiant smile celebrated great success, especially abroad. He forged a rare, lasting Middle East peace agreement between Israel and Egypt that still stands today, formalized President Richard Nixon’s opening to communist China and placed human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy.

But Carter was ultimately toppled by a 444-day hostage crisis in Iran in which revolutionary students disrespected the superpower United States by holding dozens of Americans in Tehran. The sense of malaise in the United States caused by the crisis was compounded by Carter’s domestic problems, including a sluggish economy, inflation and an energy crisis.

At times, Carter’s principled moral tone and determination to strip the presidency of its swagger, such as by selling the official yacht Sequoia, seemed to border on hypocrisy. But outside of office, Carter gained admiration by living his values. Just a day after one of several falls he suffered in 2019, despite a nasty black eye and 14 stitches, he was back to work building homes for Habitat for Humanity — and teaching Sunday school, as he had done several hundred times.

The devout Southern Baptist’s life’s work was just beginning when he hobbled out of the White House, humiliated by Reagan’s Republican landslide victory in 1980, in which the incumbent won only six states and the District of Columbia.

“As one of the youngest former presidents, I expected to have many useful years ahead,” Carter wrote in his 1982 memoir “Keeping Faith.” He kept his word and became a humanitarian icon, perhaps more popular outside the United States than at home.

Over four decades, Carter, Rosalynn and his Atlanta-based organization monitored elections in troubled areas, negotiated with despots, combated poverty and homelessness, fought disease and epidemics, and promoted public health in developing countries.

In doing so, Carter has done nothing less than reinvent the concept of the post-presidency, following a philanthropic path adopted by successors like Bill Clinton and, in Africa, George W. Bush.

His efforts on behalf of his Carter Center, founded to “build peace, fight disease and create hope,” earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Carter remained a polarizing political figure well into his old age. He was an uncertain member of the ex-presidents’ club, sometimes frustrating successors like Clinton and criticizing the foreign policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama as well as U.S. allies like Israel.

In recent years, he has come full circle as he warned of the destructive impact of a scandal-plagued White House on American politics – just as he did when his criticism of the Nixon era helped him land his unelected successor to defeat disgraced Republican ex-president Gerald Ford in 1976. (After Carter left office, he and Ford became close friends.)

In September 2019, Carter warned Americans not to re-elect President Donald Trump. “I think it will be a disaster to have four more years of Trump,” he said.

After he lost re-election, his work at the Carter Center was a great comfort. The ex-president said in a moving press conference in August 2015 about a cancer diagnosis that being president was the highlight of his political career, even if it ended prematurely – although he would not trade another four years in the White House for the joy he had after After leaving office, he began working with the Carter Center. And he said he was happy with his legacy after a rich, fulfilling life: “I think I was as blessed as any person in the world.”

Carter also said at that August press conference that marrying Rosalynn was the “highlight” of his life. According to the Carter Center, he leaves behind four children – Jack, Chip, Jeff and Amy – as well as 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

In April 2021, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visited the Carters at their home in Plains after the former presidential couple were unable to travel to Washington for the 46th president’s inauguration.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny and Haley Talbot contributed to this report.