The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Carter apologizes for health scare in Canada
Former President Jimmy Carter on Friday night apologized for what he described as his “weak moment” when he became dehydrated on the site of a Habitat for Humanity building project in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and ended up in the hospital.
“My bringing attention to this Habitat project was completely unintentional,” Carter, 92, said with a sly grin during the closing ceremony of the 34th Habitat for Humanity Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project, which was livestreamed. “I apologize to all of you for my weak moment yesterday, but I got through it fine.”
The Georgia native became dehydrated and needed medical attention on-site Thursday morning, which was the fourth day of a five-day, 150-home building blitz across Canada. As a precaution, he was transported to St. Boniface General Hospital for rehydration. After being released Friday morning, he headed straight back to the building site with his wife to attend the morning devotional that kicked off the final day of the massive project.
But it wasn’t quite that simple, Rosalynn Carter, 89, told the audience at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg on Friday night.
“I’m going to talk a little bit about Jimmy, and he’s not going to like it,” she said as her husband
of 71 years sighed slightly beside her onstage. A “wonderful” medical team tended to him in an RV on-site, she related, “and they all thought it was simply dehydration. Then somebody said, ‘Well, maybe we ought to see about his heart.’”
Leaning into the microphone slightly, she confided about the Nobel Peace Prize winner, “Well, of course, Jimmy rebelled at that.”
But eventually they persuaded him to go to the hospital, where he spent the day having “every test that there is in the world for heart disease,” his wife continued. Ultimately, she said, the results showed, “There has never been any kind of damage at all to Jimmy Carter’s heart.” As an enormous wave of cheers and applause broke out, she added, “I knew he had a good heart.”
And the former president isn’t about to hang up his tool belt just yet. Near the end of the hourlong ceremony, Habitat for Humanity International CEO Jonathan Reckford announced that the former first couple had agreed to “do this again next year.” The 35th Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project will take place in St. Joseph County, Indiana, in September 2018.
Habitat for Humanity won’t have to work very hard to drum up publicity for that or future projects, Reckford jokingly suggested.
“Just to show how devoted President Carter is, I think this week shows that he will do anything to bring more attention to the need for affordable housing,” he said, as the former president chuckled over this reference to his headline-making “weak moment” on Thursday. “We managed to get record-breaking press this week!”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with Carter after the international statesman’s health scare.
Carter has known the 45-year-old Canadian leader for, literally, Trudeau’s entire life.
“We met him when he was still a baby in arms,” Carter said Friday. “His mother and father brought him down to the White House ... and we had a chance to meet him and to admire both his father, who was my great friend later on, and also his mother, who’s still working very hard on mental health as you know.” (Like Justin Trudeau’s mother, Margaret, Rosalynn Carter has been an outspoken advocate for reducing the social stigma of mental illness.)
Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, was twice prime minister of Canada, the first time from 1968 to 1979. Carter said the elder Trudeau helped school him “in a nice way” on world leaders and other aspects of his new job.
Carter served as an honorary pallbearer at Pierre Trudeau’s funeral in 2000. “We were longtime friends,” Carter said.
After their talk, the current prime minister tweeted: “Glad you’re OK, Mr. President, and thanks for choosing Canada for 2017’s #HabitatCWP.”