After three months in hospice at home, former President Jimmy Carter remains in high spirits as he visits family, hears public discussions about his legacy and gets updates on the Carter Center’s humanitarian work around the world, his grandson said . He even enjoys ice cream a lot.
“They’re just seeing family right now, but they’re doing it in the best possible way: the two of them at home together,” Jason Carter said of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, who are now 98 and 95.
“They’ve been together for over 70 years. They also know they’re not in charge,” a young Carter said in a brief interview Tuesday. “Their belief is really rooted in this moment. And then it’s as good as it gets.”
The longest-lived U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, announced in February that after a series of brief hospitalizations, he would forego further medical intervention and confine himself to the same modest one-story house in Plains. live the rest of my life. He was first elected to the state senator in 1962. No disease was disclosed.
The hospice announcement sparked continued mourning and media attention over his 1977-81 presidency and the global humanitarian work the couple have done since they co-founded the Carter Center in 1982.
“It’s been one of luck over the last few months,” Jason Carter said Tuesday after speaking at an event honoring his grandfather. “He’s definitely going to see the pouring rain, and that’s sure to be a relief to him.”
The former president also received an update on the Carter Center’s guinea worm eradication program, which began in the mid-1980s when millions of people were affected by the parasite transmitted by unclean drinking water. Last year, there were fewer than two dozen cases globally.
On his less serious days, he also continued to enjoy his favorite peanut butter ice cream, in keeping with his political image as a peanut farmer, his grandson said.
Andrew Young, who served as Carter’s U.N. ambassador, told The Associated Press that he also visited the Carter family “a few weeks ago” and was “glad that we could have a good laugh and joke.”
Young and Jason Carter joined other friends and admirers at a celebration for the former president on Jimmy Carter Boulevard in the northeastern Atlanta suburb of Norcross on Tuesday. Yang said the setting — in one of the most racially and ethnically diverse suburbs in the United States — reflects the former president’s broader legacy as a man of peace, conflict resolution and racial equality.
When nearly 10 miles of freeway in Gwinnett County were renamed in 1976 (the year he was elected president), small towns and bedroom communities on the fringes of metropolitan Atlanta were just beginning to flourish. Now, with a population of about 1 million in Gwinnett alone, Jimmy Carter Avenue is thriving, with many businesses owned by black owners, immigrants or first-generation Americans.
Young, a senior aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, said Carter was a white politician in southern Georgia at the start of the Jim Crow era, but he proved his values were different.
As governor and president, Carter believed that “the world can come to Georgia and show everyone how to live together,” Young said.
Now, Georgia “looks like the whole world,” said Young, 91.
Nicole Love Hendrickson, who was elected in 2020 to be the first black chair of the Gwinnett County Commissioner, praised Carter as “a very respectful person.”
Referring to Carter’s landslide defeat for re-election, Young said he was personally pleased to see historians and others find success stories in reassessing Carter’s presidency — relinquishing control of the Panama Canal and developing a national energy strategy , more engaged with Africa than any U.S. president. Those achievements were either unpopular at the time or were overshadowed by Carter’s failure to curb inflation, tame the energy crisis or free American hostages in Iran before the 1980 election .
“I told him, ‘You know, it took them over 50 years to appreciate President Lincoln. It probably took this long to appreciate you, too,'” Young said.
“No one was thinking about the Panama Canal. No one was thinking about bringing Egypt and Israel together. I mean, I was thinking about trying to do something in Africa, but no one else in Washington was thinking about it, and he did. He always There are ideas about everything.”
Still, when Jason Carter addressed his grandparents’ admirers on Tuesday, he objected to seeing them as global celebrities.
“They’re like all of your grandparents—I mean, your grandparents were rednecks from southern Georgia,” he said with a laugh. “If you go in there today, they have a little rack next to the sink to dry the Ziplock bags.”
Most notably, Jason Carter said, the gathering took place while his grandfather was still alive.
“We did think that when he went into hospice, it was pretty close,” he told attendees. “Right now, I just want to tell you that he will be 99 in October.”