(Photo credit: The Carter Center, 2015)
Jimmy Carter died on Sunday, December 29, 2024 at the age of 100. He was United States president from 1977-1981. After his term ended, he was active as a peacemaker, author, and humanitarian well into his nineties. Much of his work was accomplished in partnership with his wife, Rosalynn, who predeceased him last year after 77 years of marriage.
Carter was president during a formative time in my life, late in high school going into my early years at Smith College, and there are things from that time that have had lasting impact on my life.
Carter’s actions on renewable energy, energy conservation, and environmental protection were formative for me. Because of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, oil and gasoline were high-priced and in short supply. We lived in a very rural area at the time. Reaching our high school, supermarkets, stores, doctor’s office, etc. involved at least a twenty-mile drive, so fuel efficiency became even more crucial for us. Being very aware of the efficiency of our vehicles is something that B and I have retained. The first car we bought after our marriage was a small, fuel-efficient compact; we assumed that our next car would be electric, given the emphasis that had been placed on them by Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately, that was all derailed by Reagan and the fossil fuel industry and we didn’t get our first electric car until 2017.
We also continued to take home energy efficiency seriously. B and I were talking recently about how we never got into large, lighted Christmas displays for our yard, choosing instead to just put our Christmas tree, now with super-efficient LED lights, near our front window. That all started back in the Carter administration with its emphasis on energy conservation. Carter, who was an engineer, installed solar panels on the White House roof to heat water; Reagan later removed them. I’m proud to say that our home and most of our transportation are powered by solar energy. We have very efficient heat pumps for hot water and heating and cooling our home. We are also well-insulated and choose appliances and lighting carefully with our eyes on efficiency. The appalling thing is that, while President Carter saw clearly what we needed to do as a country to address environmental/climate protection and energy security long-term and set us on that path, subsequent political and corporate leaders abandoned those efforts with grave planetary consequences. We would not be in such dire circumstances around the globe if we had tackled these issues around renewable energy and environmental/climate protection back then.
I appreciate Carter’s example of living out his faith. He set out to serve humanity, especially those who are most vulnerable. He was long active with Habitat for Humanity, which builds homes for people experiencing poverty. Through the Carter Center, he spearheaded a massive effort to eradicate Guinea worm disease in Africa and Asia. In 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases; in 2023, under 20 human cases were reported.
Carter was also a champion for human rights. As president, he appointed people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds and many women to executive and judicial branch posts. He created the Department of Education, which had previously been part of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, to help promote excellence in education regardless of race or economic circumstances. He also created the Department of Energy to spearhead reforms.
I’m grateful that President Biden will still be in office for the state funeral for Jimmy Carter on January 9th. The then-young Senator Biden was an early endorser of Carter’s run for the Democratic nomination in 1976 and the two have been friends for decades. While Biden and Carter are both one-term Democratic presidents who were largely derailed by high inflation rates, what is more striking to me is that they are both dedicated public servants, motivated by love of country and their faith, Carter as a Baptist and Biden as a Catholic. Both celebrated the diversity and pluralism of the United States and tried to protect and preserve our environment.
I am worried that the incoming Trump administration will try to dismantle the gains made under President Biden in the same way that Reagan undid many of Carter’s initiatives.
A hallmark of Jimmy Carter’s life was always telling the truth, even when that truth was difficult to hear. Donald Trump is known for lying, thousands of times in his first term and thousands more since. It would have been distressing to have Trump overseeing the plans for Carter’s state funeral.
After the funeral and observances in Atlanta where the Carter Center is located, Jimmy Carter will be laid to rest beside Rosalynn under a willow tree near their long-time home in Plains, Georgia. There is a comfort in that for me – to think of them as reunited after such a long and fruitful partnership on earth. Both his longevity and the length of their marriage set records among US presidents, records that may well stand for as long as the United States endures.
Let’s all work to uphold the ideals that Jimmy Carter espoused so that the United States will become a “more perfect union” and grow as a democracy, not devolve into oligarchy or autocracy.
