The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Jimmy Carter celebrating 98th birthday
ATLANTA >> Jimmy Carter, already the longest-living U.S. president in history, turned 98 on Saturday, celebrating with family and friends in Plains, the tiny Georgia town where he and his wife, 95-year-old Rosalynn, were born in the years between World War I and the Great Depression.
His latest milestone came as The Carter Center, which the 39th president and the former first lady established after their one White House term, marked 40 years of promoting democracy and conflict resolution, monitoring elections, and advancing public health in the developing world.
Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson now leading the Carter Center board, described his grandfather, an outspoken Christian, as content with his life and legacy.
“He is looking at his 98th birthday with faith in God’s plan for him,” the younger Carter, 47, said, “and that’s just a beautiful blessing for all of us to know, personally, that he is at peace and happy with where he has been and where he’s going.”
Carter Center leaders said the former president, who survived a cancer diagnosis in 2015 and a serious fall at home in 2019, was enjoying reading congratulatory messages sent by well-wishers around the world via social media and the center’s website. But Jason Carter said his grandfather mostly looked forward to a simple day that included watching his favorite Major League Baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, on television.
“He’s still 100% with it, even though daily life things are a lot harder now,” Jason Carter said. “But one thing I guarantee. He will watch all the Braves games this weekend.”
James Earl Carter Jr. won the 1976 presidential election after beginning the campaign as a littleknown, one-term Georgia governor. His surprise performance in the Iowa caucuses established the small, Midwestern state as an epicenter of presidential politics. Carter went on to defeat President Gerald Ford in the general election, largely on the strength of sweeping the South before his native region shifted heavily to Republicans.
A Naval Academy alumnus, Navy officer and peanut farmer, Carter won in no small part because of his promise never to lie to an electorate weary over the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that resulted in Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency.