RIP Mr President

There are but a few people I consider heroes but, alongside Rosa Parks and Harvey Milk there has long been a space for Jimmy Carter, who passed away at the age of 100.

I have always said that, while he accomplished some great things while president—promoting human rights for all at a time when many in this country were marginalized, adding to the national park and preserve system, reestablishing governmental credibility after the Watergate Crisis, and with  the Camp David Accords, forging a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel—it was his post-presidential life and work and message that proved him to be the greatest ex-President who ever lived.

In 1946, Jimmy Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and then joined the Navy submarine branch, working his way into “Rickover’s boys,” the unit of America’s nuclear submarine fleet championed by Admiral Hyman Rickover. Carter was on his way up until a death at home changed his destiny …

His father Earl, a farmer and businessman, passed from cancer in 1958 so Jimmy and Rosalynn, and their children, returned to Georgia to take over the family farming business. It was there he first ran for school board, then state senator. He was elected governor in 1970, serving one successful term before launching an improbable bid to become president, winning the Democratic nomination and then defeating Republican President Gerald Ford in November 1976.

 I remember seeing footage of inauguration day when Jimmy, Rosalynn, with their daughter Amy, chose to walk from the capitol back to the White House. He was an everyman; he was any man.

In November 1979, Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostages. Carter tied negotiations, then launched a rescue mission that never reached its target because of helicopter failure. Carter’s Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher completed negotiations under Algerian auspices to free the American hostages, who were released after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president so he often gets the credit, but it was Jimmy Carter who brokered the release.

Jimmy Carter returned to Plains and he could have lived a quiet life, but instead he chose to step up and live his last, best act. He and Rosalynn began volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, building houses for the poor; then the couple founded the Carter Center, which focused on making peace and spreading health and democracy around the world.

As leader of the Carter Center, he won the Nobel Prize, the United National Human Rights Prize and many other notable awards from countries, organizations and world leaders, and both Jimmy and Rosalynn were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, who said:

”Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have done more good things for more people in more places than any other couple on the face of the Earth.”

Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley wrote in his book “The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter”:

“People will be celebrating Jimmy Carter for hundreds of years. His reputation is only going to grow."

Rosalynn died a little more than a year ago; the couple is survived by their children Amy, Chip, Jack and Jeff; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.

RIP Jimmy

And thank you for showing all of us the way.