It's Jimmy Carter's 100th Birthday! Wow!
God Bless You, Mr. Carter.
Jimmy Carter has been a governor, a president of the United States, a leader of UN missions to oversee elections, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, the founder of a prestigious NGO that promotes peace and has eliminated horrible diseases, the subject of one of the greatest SNL skits ever, and the man who, with his beloved wife Rosalynn, made the housing nonprofit Habitat for Humanity a household name. He put solar panels on the White House at a time when world leaders were only starting to be briefed on global warming, although fact check, he was primarily worried we’d run out of oil. It’s no exaggeration to say Carter was so good at his post-presidency that his time in office has also been reconsidered in a far kinder light.
Update/more: And we meant to include this, but forgot until it came up in the comments: In 1952, US Navy Lt. James Earl Carter, then just 28, led a crew of Navy volunteers in repairing a partially melted-down nuclear reactor in Ontario, during which each member of the crew could only work inside the reactor vessel for 90 seconds at a time.
When Carter was diagnosed with cancer, Wonkette extremely prematurely wrote his obituary. It was nine years ago.
And today, he made history again by becoming the first former US president to reach the age of 100. It’s also his first birthday without Rosalynn, who died last November, after 77 years of marriage.
In hospice care for the past 19 months but in no particular hurry to leave it any time soon, Carter told his family back in August that he hopes to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris, and with Election Day in just 34 days, we’re betting he’ll not only make it, but we hope he’ll see her inaugurated too. (Georgia absentee ballots go out next Monday, although for Carter’s vote to count he will of course have to hold on at least until November 5.)
What a man. What a life!
President Joe Biden offered Carter a warm birthday greeting on CBS Sunday Morning, calling Carter a “moral force for our nation and the world” and a “voice of courage, conviction, compassion, and most of all, a beloved friend.” Get ready to cry some.
“Put simply, Mr. President, I admire you so darn much.” So say we all.
The admiration continued with birthday wishes from Barack Obama:
The AP reports that in St. Paul, Minnesota, “Habitat for Humanity volunteers are honoring Carter with a five-day effort to build 30 houses.”
Jimmy hasn’t made a public appearance since attending Rosalynn’s funeral services last year; his grandson Jason Carter, who chairs the Carter Center governing board, told the AP that after Rosalyn’s death,
“We frankly didn’t think he was going to go on much longer. […] But it’s a faith journey for him, and he’s really given himself over to what he feels is God’s plan. He knows he’s not in charge. But in these last few months, especially, he has gotten a lot more engaged in world events, a lot more engaged in politics, a lot more, just engaged, emotionally, with all of us.”
And that definitely includes his plan to contribute, one more time, to safeguarding American democracy by voting for Kamala Harris.
God Bless you, Jimmy Carter. And if the election gets us worried, we’ll all do our best to follow your advice, channeled through Dan Aykroyd, to chill out and
remember you’re a living organism on this planet, and you’re very safe. […] Relax, stay inside and listen to some music, Okay? Do you have any Allman Brothers?
Stay safe, America, and stay away from those little orange barrel-shaped pills.
[AP / CNN / Update: Christian Science Monitor]
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Updated with a brief mention of that time when Jimmy Carter, then 28, led a Navy crew repairing a melted-down nuclear reactor. From the inside.
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2023/0221/Profile-in-courage-When-Jimmy-Carter-helped-save-a-nuclear-reactor
And updated again because my byline fell out again, sigh.