Former Navy lieutenant, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and President of the United States Jimmy Carter turns 100 today, October 1. He is the first American president to reach that age.
The 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981, Carter reached the milestone Tuesday while in hospice care, where he has been since February 2023. Carter has survived two kinds of cancer and several falls.
Today is Carter’s first birthday in 78 years without his late wife Rosalynn Carter, who died in November.
Carter’s presidency is widely remembered for assuming office during turbulent years and for serving just one term. However, his post-presidential public life has been among the most influential and effective of any former president as a global humanitarian leader.
Less remembered is Carter’s military career prior to entering politics, but he played supporting roles in some of the Navy’s most important history. Carter was a member of the development team of nuclear-powered submarines, served above and below the surface and helped prevent a nuclear disaster in North America.
“Your hopeful vision of our country, your commitment to a better world, and your unwavering belief in the power of human goodness continues to be a guiding light for all of us,” current President Joe Biden said in a birthday message to Carter on Sunday, Sept. 29.
Carter’s father, James Earl Carter Sr., joined the U.S. Army during World War I, though the war ended before he was sent overseas. His son went into the Navy, graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946. After serving on surface vessels in the Atlantic and Pacific, Lieutenant Junior Grade Carter joined the submarine corps, eventually serving as executive officer of the USS K-1.
During his last year in service, he worked with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, working on the development of nuclear propulsion systems for the Navy. It was there that his personal actions and knowledge of nuclear engineering helped prevent a major nuclear accident when a nuclear reactor at the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada suffered a partial meltdown.
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When Canadian officials asked the United States for help, Carter led a team of volunteers to the site. The radiation was so strong they could only enter into the reactor for 90 seconds at a time. The team prepared by building a duplicate of the interior to practice deactivating the reactor. The volunteer Navy team worked efficiently, exposing themselves to dangerous levels of radiation, but succeeded in preventing a full meltdown and wider disaster. “They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now,” he would later say in 2008.
Carter was then set to serve as the engineering officer on the nuclear submarine the USS Seawolf when his father died. Carter left active duty to return to Plains and run the family farm. He stayed in the reserves, fully retiring in 1961 with the rank of lieutenant. Carter soon entered politics. He then won the 1976 presidential election. His presidency saw several foreign policy successes, including the Camp David Accords and SALT II deal with the Soviet Union, but was marred by high energy prices and the Iranian embassy hostage crisis. One military effort to rescue them failed, leaving three Marines and five airmen dead before it could reach its destination. The hostages were only released after he left office, having lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan.
Lieutenant Carter (ret.) had an extensive career in helping others after leaving office. He founded the Carter Center, a human rights and pro-democracy organization that helps provide election monitoring. He was known for years for his active participation in building homes with Habitat for Humanity.
In 2015, Carter announced that he had cancer, with melanoma being detected in his brain. By year’s end, after treatment, his body showed no continued signs of cancer. However, increased hospital visits and growing age led the former president to enter hospice in early 2023.
At a recent benefit concert celebrating his centennial in Atlanta on Sept. 17, musicians and speakers from a variety of genres paid tribute to Carter’s years of activism and humanitarian work. The concert was recorded and airs tonight on Georgia Public Broadcasting.
The former president also pushed for other public health fights, including the eradication of guinea worm. After his cancer diagnosis, Carter said that he hoped to live long enough to see the disease wiped out. The disease has been cut down, with only four cases reported in humans in the first seven months of 2024. Alongside other honors, including being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, the nuclear submarine the USS Jimmy Carter was named for him, the first Navy vessel to be named for a living president.
The former president lives in his longtime home of Plains, Georgia. According to family he remains an active follower of the news and fan of the Atlanta Braves baseball team.
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