Jimmy Carter has accomplished something no other former U.S. president has — he notched a 100th birthday.
Carter, who served one term in the White House, hit the milestone Tuesday at his home in Plains, Georgia, where he has been receiving hospice care for the last 19 months.
The proud Democrat, who has grown increasingly weaker in recent months, has told relatives he wants to hang on until Oct. 15, when early voting begins in Georgia, so he can cast his ballot in the 2024 presidential election.
“I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Carter said, his grandson Jason Carter told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
A former peanut farmer and Navy veteran, Carter has lived nearly six years longer than another age-defying former president, George H.W. Bush, a Republican who was 94 and 171-days old when he died Nov. 30, 2018.
Some of Carter’s other successors went online to wish him a Happy Birthday.
“To put it simply: I admire you so darn much,” President Joe Biden posted.
Former President Barack Obama, in an online post, lauded Carter’s “accomplishments in the White House, his incredible impact since leaving office, his fundamental decency.”
Carter marked his 100th birthday 10 days after his life and legacy was celebrated with a star-studded concert at the Fox Theater in Atlanta that featured performances of “Love Shack” by Georgia’s own B-52’s and covers of some of the best-known songs by The Allman Brothers, a Southern rock band that raised money for Carter’s successful presidential campaign in 1976.
The involvement of what was then one of the nation’s most popular bands in Carter’s campaign earned the famously strait-laced candidate the unlikely nickname of “the rock ‘n’ roll president.”
While the guest of honor couldn’t be in Atlanta for his shindig, the concert was intended to be a gift for the 39th president, and Carter was expected to watch the special on Georgia Public Television as part of his private family celebration.
Not in attendance at his 100th birthday bash was the love of his long, long life, his wife, Rosalynn Carter, who died last November at 96. He made an appearance at her tribute service in a wheelchair, his legs covered in a blanket adorned with both their faces on it.
Their last public appearance together was in September 2023, when they were spotted riding in a black SUV at the Plains Peanut Festival.
Carter served one term in the White House, from 1977 to 1981, during which he presided over the Camp David Accords that ended years of conflict between Israel and Egypt, made human rights integral to U.S. foreign policy and took a hard line against the Soviet Union.
After losing his bid for re-election to Ronald Reagan, Carter helped turn Habitat for Humanity into a worldwide force for good. And he established the Carter Center to promote and expand human rights, an effort that earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Promoting democracy was, in many ways, Carter’s life’s work. A year after supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s election, Carter wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times that “promoters of the lie that the election was stolen have taken over one political party and stoked distrust in our electoral systems.”
Ever the Southern gentleman, Carter did not mention Trump by name.
