Former President Jimmy Carter will be receiving hospice care, according to a February 18, 2023, statement from the Carter Center.
“After a series of short hospital stays, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter today decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention. He has the full support of his family and his medical team. The Carter family asks for privacy during this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers,” the statement reads.
Carter is 98-years-old. In addition to being the nation’s 39th president, Carter is well-known as a symbol of public service and charitable work.
Here’s what you need to know:
President Carter has suffered various health woes over the years.
According to CNN, Carter “beat brain cancer in 2015,” and “faced a series of health scares in 2019, and consequentially underwent surgery to remove pressure on his brain.”
Carter’s health was failing enough that he has stopped teaching Sunday School in Plains, Georgia, his hometown, CNN reported.
The American Association for Cancer Research wrote that, just four months “after former President Jimmy Carter announced he had metastatic melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain, the nonagenarian said he is cancer-free following radiation therapy and treatment with a cancer immunotherapy.”
In August 2015, “after surgery for a mass on his liver, tests revealed melanoma and further tests found that the cancer had spread to his brain. President Carter explained that he would undergo radiation therapy to treat the “spots” on his brain, followed by at least four rounds of cancer immunotherapy with the drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda),” the association reported.
Carter has also suffered from repeated falls, according to The New York Times.
According to his Carter Center biography, James Earl Carter, Jr., the 39th president of the United States, was born on October 1, 1924, in “the small farming town of Plains, Georgia, and grew up in the nearby community of Archery.”
His father, James Earl Carter, Sr., “was a farmer and businessman; his mother, Lillian Gordy Carter, a registered nurse,” the bio says.
It reads:
He was educated in the public school of Plains, attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. In the Navy he became a submariner, serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and rising to the rank of lieutenant. Chosen by Admiral Hyman Rickover for the nuclear submarine program, he was assigned to Schenectady, New York, where he took graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the second nuclear submarine.
He married Rosalynn Smith of Plains on July 7, 1946, the bio says.
According to the bio, when Carter’s father died in 1953, “he resigned his naval commission and returned with his family to Georgia. He took over the Carter farms, and he and Rosalynn operated Carter’s Warehouse, a general-purpose seed and farm supply company in Plains.”
He served roles in local government, “serving on county boards supervising education, the hospital authority, and the library,” the bio says. “In 1962 he won election to the Georgia Senate. He lost his first gubernatorial campaign in 1966, but won the next election, becoming Georgia’s 76th governor on January 12, 1971. He was the Democratic National Committee campaign chairman for the 1974 congressional and gubernatorial elections.”
On Dec. 12, 1974, the bio says, “he announced his candidacy for president of the United States. He won his party’s nomination on the first ballot at the 1976 Democratic National Convention and was elected president on Nov. 2, 1976.”
The bio continues:
Jimmy Carter served as president from Jan. 20, 1977 to Jan. 20, 1981. Significant foreign policy accomplishments of his administration included the Panama Canal treaties, the Camp David Accords, the treaty of peace between Egypt and Israel, the SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union, and the establishment of U.S. diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. He championed human rights throughout the world. On the domestic side, the administration’s achievements included a comprehensive energy program conducted by a new Department of Energy; deregulation in energy, transportation, communications, and finance; major educational programs under a new Department of Education; and major environmental protection legislation, including the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
READ NEXT: Video Shows the Chaos After the Michigan State University Shooting.
