In the three months since Jimmy Carter entered hospice, the 98-year-old former president is enjoying visits from family members, fielding updates on his humanitarian foundation and eating peanut butter ice cream at the modest single-story home in Georgia he shares with his wife, his grandson said.
Carter’s grandson, Jason Carter, provided the update on his grandfather after the 39th president entered end-of-life care at his Plains home in February “instead of additional medical intervention” after a series of short hospital stays.
“They’re just meeting with family right now, but they’re doing it in the best possible way: the two of them together at home,” Jason Carter said Tuesday of his grandparents Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. “They’ve been together 70-plus years.”
The family didn’t disclose if the Democrat was suffering from a specific illness when making the February announcement, however Carter — the longest living US president — has suffered from a number of serious ailments in recent years, including a fight with cancer and a fractured pelvis.
The younger Carter previously said his grandfather was “at peace” as he lived out the remainder of his life with wife Rosalynn, 95, in the same house where they lived when he was first elected to the Georgia senate in 1962.
At an event honoring the former president on Tuesday, Jason Carter said the hospice announcement prompted many to reflect on his grandfather’s legacy both as commander-in-chief from 1977 to 1981 and as a humanitarian with his work founding The Carter Center the next year.
“That’s been one of the blessings of the last couple of months,” he said. “He is certainly getting to see the outpouring and it’s been gratifying to him for sure.”
Family, friends and admirers of the one-term president celebrated him at an event held along Jimmy Carter Boulevard in Norcross, a town northeast of Atlanta in one country’s most racially and ethnically diverse suburban regions.
Despite all the accolades, Jason Carter told his grandparents’ fans that they were just ordinary people despite their time in the White House.
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“They’re just like all of y’all’s grandparents — I mean, to the extent y’all’s grandparents are rednecks from south Georgia,” he said to laughter. “If you go down there even today, next to their sink they have a little rack where they dry Ziplock bags.”
Andrew Young, who served as Carter’s UN Ambassador, told the crowd that his former boss believed “that the world can come to Georgia and show everybody how to live together.”
Now, Young said, the state “looks like the whole world.”
The 91-year-old said he had recently visited Carter and felt “very pleased we could laugh and joke about old times.”
“I told him, ‘you know, it took them over 50 years to appreciate President Lincoln. It may take that long to appreciate you,’” Young said.
Jason Carter said he believes his grandfather could make it to 99 years old.
“We did think that when he went into hospice it was very close to the end,” he told attendees. “Now, I’m just going to tell you, he’s going to be 99 in October.”
With Post wires
