Former President Jimmy Carter, a man who redefined what a post-presidency could be, died Sunday. He was 100.

His son Chip Carter confirmed that the former president died at his home in Plains around 3:45 p.m

Carter, who lived longer than any other U.S. president, was admitted to a home hospice in Plains, Georgia, in February 2023 after a series of brief hospital stays.

The only Georgian ever elected to the White House, Carter left office after a single term marked by peacemaking between Israel and Egypt but overshadowed by the Iran hostage crisis. In the decades that followed, his reputation grew through his and his wife Rosalynn Carter’s work at the Carter Center in Atlanta and his philanthropic causes such as Habitat for Humanity.

“People will celebrate Jimmy Carter for centuries. His reputation will only grow,” wrote Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University, in his book “The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.”

Photo credit: CARTER CENTER

Photo credit: CARTER CENTER

James Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains on October 1, 1924, the first of four children of Earl Carter, a farmer and businessman, and Lillian Gordy Carter, a nurse.

He received a commission at the US Naval Academy, graduated and joined the Navy’s Submarine Division, where in seven years he worked his way up to “Rickover’s Boys”, the emerging elite unit of the American nuclear submarine force. Fleet championed by the legendary Admiral Hyman Rickover. Carter was on the rise until a death at home changed his fortunes.

His father, Earl, a farmer, businessman and important figure in the Plains community, died of cancer. Carter left the Navy and its remote deployments like Hawaii and returned to Georgia in 1953 with Rosalynn and their growing family to take over the family farm. There he ran first for school board and then for state senator.

He was elected governor in 1970. Carter served a successful term before launching an unlikely bid to become president, winning the Democratic nomination and then defeating Republican President Gerald Ford in November 1976.

On Inauguration Day, instead of driving past the crowd in an armored limousine, Jimmy and Rosalynn got out of the car with daughter Amy at their side and walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, holding hands and waving.

Carter’s achievements included promoting human rights, expanding the national park and wildlife system, restoring government credibility after the Watergate crisis, and the Camp David Accords, which forged a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.

They were overshadowed by unrest at home and abroad. At home, Carter and his advisers, most of them Washington outsiders, faced resistance from his own party.

Then, in November 1979, Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostages. He tried negotiating and then launched a courageous rescue mission, but it never reached its destination due to a helicopter failure. He was only able to resolve the situation on the last day of his term.

At home, a weakening economy, exacerbated by oil embargoes on Middle Eastern countries, and the rise of the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan contributed to his defeat in November 1980.

Carter returned to the tiny Plains and used the power of an ex-president’s bully pulpit as a springboard for his final and, some say, best act.

Carter began volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, a relatively new organization based in America that builds homes for the poor. He then co-founded with Rosalynn the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which focused on building peace and spreading health and democracy around the world. It will advance the couple’s humanitarian and democratic work.

Because of his service as president and director of the Carter Center, he won the Nobel Prize, the United National Human Rights Prize, and many other notable awards from countries, organizations, and world leaders. The Carters were both awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

“Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter,” Clinton said, “have done more good for more people in more places than any other couple on earth.”

Rosalynn Carter, Jimmy Carter’s wife of 77 years, died in November 2023.

They are survived by their children, Amy, Chip, Jack and Jeff; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.