ATLANTA (AP) — Jimmy Carter has always been a disciplined man with habits. But the former president broke with routine Sunday, suspending his practice of quietly watching church services online to celebrate his 99th birthday with his wife, Rosalynn, and their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Plains.
The gathering took place in the same one-story structure where the Carters lived before he was first elected to the Georgia Senate in 1962. As tributes poured in from around the world, it was an opportunity for the Carter family to honor his personal legacy.
“The remarkable piece to me and I think to my family is that even though my grandparents have accomplished so much, they really remain the same South Georgia couple living in the village of 600 people where they were born,” said grandson Jason. Carter, who chairs the board at The Carter Center, which his grandparents founded in 1982 after leaving the White House a year earlier.
Despite being a global figure, the younger Carter said his grandparents always “made it easy for us, as a family, to be as normal as we could be.”
Meanwhile, at The Carter Center in Atlanta, 99 new Americans, hailing from 45 countries, took the oath of allegiance as part of a naturalization ceremony set for the former president’s birthday.
“This is amazing, and I’m so happy that it’s here,” Tania Martinez said after the event. A 53-year-old nurse in Roswell, Martinez was born in Cuba and came to the US from Ghana 12 years ago.
President Jimmy Carter celebrated his 99th birthday Sunday.AFP via Getty Images
“Now, I will be free forever,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
Celebrating the longest living US president in this way was unimaginable not so long ago. The Carters announced in February that their patriarch had foregone further medical care and entered hospice care at home after a series of hospitalizations. But Carter, who overcame cancer diagnosed at age 90 and learned to walk after having her hip replaced at age 94, defied the odds once again.
“If Jimmy Carter were a tree, he would be a towering Southern oak,” said Donna Brazile, former Democratic national chairwoman and presidential campaign manager who started Carter’s campaign. “He’s as good as they come and as tough as they come.”
Jill Stuckey, a longtime Plains resident who visits the former first couple regularly, warned to “never underestimate Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.”
His latest endurance has allowed Carter a rare privilege even for a president: He’s been able to enjoy months of acclaim usually reserved when a former White House occupant dies. The latest round included an outpouring of messages from world leaders and pop culture figures wearing “Jimmy Carter 99” hats, with many focusing on Carter’s four decades of global humanitarian work since leaving the Oval Office.
Work on the wooden cake display continues in honor of Carter’s birthday at the White House.AP
Katie Couric, the first woman to anchor a US television network’s nightly newscast, praised Carter in a social media video for her “relentless effort every day to make the world a better place.”
He pointed to Carter’s work to eradicate Guinea worm disease and river blindness, while advocating for peace and democracy in many countries. He said he has written 32 books and worked for decades with Habitat for Humanity building homes for low-income people.
“Oh, yeah, and you’re the governor of Georgia. And did I mention the president of the United States?” he joked. “When are you going to stop being lazy?”
Bill Clinton, the 42nd president and the first Democratic president after Carter’s crushing defeat, showed no signs of the frosty relationship the two Southerners once had.
People write birthday cards at a celebration held at The Carter Center in Atlanta on September 30.AP
“Jimmy! Happy birthday,” Clinton said in her video message. “You can only be 99 years old once. It has been a long and good journey, and we are grateful for your service and your friendship and the enduring embodiment of the American dream.”
Musician Peter Gabriel led concertgoers at Madison Square Garden in a rendition of “Happy Birthday,” as did the Indigo Girls at a recent concert.
In Atlanta, the Carter Library & Museum and the adjacent Carter Center held weekend events, including a citizenship ceremony. The museum offers 99 cent admission on Saturdays. Commemorations there were able to continue Sunday only because Congress reached an agreement to avoid a partial government shutdown at the start of the federal fiscal year, which coincides with Carter’s birthday.
Jason Carter said his grandfather found it “exciting” to see a reevaluation of his presidency. Carter’s term is often considered a failure due to inflation, global fuel shortages and the holding of American hostages in Iran, an encounter that led to Republican Ronald Reagan’s 1980 ouster.
But Carter’s focus on diplomacy, his emphasis on the environment before the climate crisis was widely recognized and his focus on efficient government — his presidency added little to the national debt — have earned historians a second look.
Visitors pass portraits of former presidents at The Carter Center.AP
Indeed, Carter’s longevity offers a frame for explaining how much the world has changed during his lifetime while remaining aware that certain political and societal challenges endure.
The Carter Center’s disease eradication work takes place mostly in developing countries. But Jimmy and Roslaynn Carter were first exposed to river blindness while growing up surrounded by the poverty that devastated the rural South during the Great Depression.
The Center’s advocacy of global democracy has reached countries that were still part of various European empires when Carter was born in 1924 or were under heavy American influence in the decades after World War II. Yet in recent years, Carter has declared his own country more of an “oligarchy” than a functioning democracy. And the Center has since been involved in monitoring and tracking US elections.
The year Carter was born, Congress passed sweeping immigration restrictions, dramatically blocking Ellis Island as a portal to the nation. Now, a naturalization ceremony to mark Carter’s 99th birthday comes as Washington continues its decades-long battle over immigration policy. Republicans, in particular, have moved well to the right of Reagan, who in 1986 signed a blanket amnesty policy for millions of immigrants who were in the country illegally or had no sure legal path to citizenship.
Jason Carter says understanding his grandfather’s impact means resisting the urge to judge whether he solved every problem he faced or won every election. Instead, he said, the effort is to recognize the overall impact rooted in respecting others on an individual level and trying to help them.
“You don’t get more out of life than he does, do you?” The younger Carter said. “It’s been an extraordinary life, rich with a long marriage, a wonderful partnership with my grandmother, and the ability to see the world and interact with it in a way that almost no one else ever does.”
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