Former US President Jimmy Carter celebrates his 100th birthday

Jimmy Carter was preparing to celebrate his 100th birthday on Tuesday. It was the first time an American president had lived a full century, and it marked another milestone in a life that brought the son of a Depression-era farmer to the White House and around the world as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, humanitarian and champion of democracy.

Spending the last 19 months in a Plains home hospice, the Georgia Democrat and 39th president continued to defy expectations, much as he did with his rise from his family’s peanut farming and warehousing business to the global stage.

He served one term as president from 1977 to 1981 and then spent more than forty years leading the Carter Center, which he and his wife, Rosalynn, founded in 1982 to “bring peace, fight disease and build hope.”

“Not everyone gets to live 100 years on this earth, and if someone does and uses that time to do so much good for so many people, it’s worth celebrating.” – Jason Carter, grandson of a former president and chairman of the Carter Center’s governing board – he said in an interview.

“These last few months, 19 months, when he was in hospice, became an opportunity for reflection for our family,” he said.

“And then for the rest of the country and the world to really think about it. It was a really rewarding time.”

The former president was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, where he spent more than 80 of his 100 years of life.

He is expected to celebrate his birthday in the same single-story house he and Rosalynn built in the early 1960s – before his first election to the Georgia State Senate.

The former first lady, who was also born in Plains, died last November at the age of 96.

In September, the Carter Center hosted a music gala in Atlanta to honor the former president’s memory, featuring a variety of genres and artists, including some who campaigned with him in 1976.

The event raised more than US$1.2 million (£900,000) for the center’s programs and will be broadcast on Georgia Public Broadcasting on Tuesday.

Carter survived a cancer diagnosis at age 90, several falls and hip replacement surgery in the mid-1990s before announcing at age 98 that he would enter hospice.

Plains residents have planned another concert for Tuesday night.

Mr. Carter was last seen in public almost a year ago, when he used a reclining wheelchair to attend two of his wife’s funeral services.

Visibly weakened and silent, he was joined in the front row at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church in Atlanta by the couple’s four children, each living former first lady, President Joe Biden and his wife Jill, and former President Bill Clinton.

Jason Carter said the centenarian president, born four years after women were granted the constitutional right to vote and four decades before Black women gained access to the ballot, was looking forward to casting his votes in the 2024 presidential election – for Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat who wants to become the first woman, second black person and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office.