Former President Jimmy Carter Dead at 100
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00:00I would say I'm fairly optimistic about the future. I still have ultimate hope in the American people.
00:10Jimmy Carter's longevity cemented his spot in history. He held the title of longest living U.S. president.
00:17How would you like the world to remember you?
00:20I'd like for them to remember me as a man of peace.
00:23But perhaps most central to his legacy was his tireless championing of human rights after leaving the White House.
00:30America must always stand for these basic human rights at home and abroad. That is both our history and our destiny.
00:41His decades of work earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
00:45We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace.
00:56But before he became one of America's most distinguished humanitarians.
01:01We can make these changes and we must.
01:05Or the leader of the free world.
01:07And we will fight our wars against poverty, ignorance and injustice.
01:14James Earl Carter Jr. was a Navy Lieutenant from the small town of Plains, Georgia.
01:19Even here in Plains with 635 people, there's a way to still express what I am.
01:28And in 1946 he married his wife Rosalind, a moment he called the pinnacle of his life.
01:34When I first had a date with her, the next morning I told my mother that was the girl I wanted to marry.
01:40What's your secret?
01:43Well, first of all, we love each other.
01:45Support has helped me for the last 69 years since we've been married in everything I've ever tried.
01:50With his wife by his side, Carter rebuilt his family's peanut business before launching his political career.
01:56My name is Jimmy Carter and I'm running for president.
02:00Previously a one-term Georgia governor, the no-frills outsider campaigned on a platform of honesty in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
02:08I would not tell a lie. I would not mislead the American people.
02:14Defeating President Gerald Ford in 1976.
02:18I, Jimmy Carter, do solemnly swear.
02:20Let us create together a new national spirit of unity and trust.
02:26During his single term in the White House, Carter improved relations with China and brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
02:34A framework for peace in the Middle East.
02:40But he struggled to combat rising inflation, high unemployment and the effects of an energy crisis.
02:46It is a crisis of confidence that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.
02:55The Iran hostage crisis marked the final quarter of his term before he lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
03:03A lot of critics of yours when you were president say that you've been a fantastic ex-president. You hear that all the time.
03:09I don't mind that.
03:12His time in the White House proved to be a stepping stone for his life of public service.
03:17In 1982, he and Rosalynn founded the Carter Center.
03:20The Carter Center, where Rosalynn and I devote our lives now, is designed specifically to promote peace among the poorest and most isolated, neglected, forgotten, suffering people on Earth.
03:32We hope and expect that within a year or two, there will be no more guinea worm anywhere.
03:38We have transformed the lives of, I would say, millions of people, primarily in the poorest and most destitute and forgotten communities in the world.
03:51And Carter has been a leading force supporting Habitat for Humanity, helping build over 4,000 homes across the world with his former first lady.
03:59We hope it'll go like this all over the world. We're now building one home each day for poor people in need.
04:05It's been one of the most gratifying and challenging and difficult things we've ever done, you know, physically speaking.
04:12Also on his lengthy post-White House resume, author, professor, Sunday school teacher, and, as he told E.T. back in 2016, artist.
04:22Well, I've been painting since I was in the Navy. I don't sell any paintings. I give my painting to the Carter Center one every year.
04:28Carter also survived numerous health scares, beating brain cancer in 2015.
04:34I was prepared to go, but things turned out for the better.
04:39And just one day after suffering the first of several falls in 2019, he was back to building homes.
04:45We haven't missed a Habitat project in 36 years, so I didn't want to miss this one.
04:51I would say that years after being in the White House have been more gratifying and more fulfilling.
04:57Even than being in the White House.
04:59I've sought to carve out for myself a productive and I hope useful and certainly a gratifying life.
05:06I've been very lucky.