Former President Jimmy Carter died Sunday afternoon at the age of 100.
The Carter Center confirmed that the former president died peacefully and surrounded by his family at his home in Plains, Georgia. At 100 years old, Carter was the longest-lived president in U.S. history.
A life-long Atlanta Braves fan, he was the first president to welcome a Super Bowl champion to the White House (the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1980, who came alongside the World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates).
Carter also was president in 1980 when he announced that the United States would boycott the 1980 summer Olympic Games in Moscow to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. More than 60 nations ultimately boycotted the Games, including West Germany, Japan and China. Writing in his 2010 book, “White House Diary,” Carter observed with respect to his order to the U.S. team that in hindsight “one of my most difficult decisions was supporting the boycott of the Summer Olympics.”
In his presidential memoir, “Keeping Faith,” Carter also discussed the choice not to send a U.S. team to Moscow. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prompted Carter to lead dozens of countries to boycott the Olympics, which led to a retaliatory, Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics that included more than a dozen countries.
“For the Soviet Union, the Moscow Olympics was much more than a sporting event,” Carter wrote. “They saw it as a triumph for communism and a vivid demonstration to other nations of the world that the Soviets represented the true spirit of the ancient Olympics.”
After the boycott was formalized with a vote by the U.S. Olympic Committee, Carter invited the entire American team to the White House, where each athlete got a brief handshake, posed for a picture with the president, and received the Congressional Gold Medal.
Carter (born James Earl Carter, Jr.) served one term as U.S. president, from 1977-1981. He lived longer after leaving office than any other previous U.S. president, and his legacy is noted by his post-presidency work. He founded The Carter Center in 1982, a nonprofit, nonpartisan center focused on issues of public policy. Through the center, he worked as an advocate for democracy, human rights, disease prevention and conflict resolution and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Carter also partnered with Habitat for Humanity for more than 30 years.
Carter, who returned to his home state of Georgia after leaving the presidency, was a notable fan of the Braves. He attended numerous Braves games, including the final game at Turner Field in October 2016, and was caught on the kiss cam with his longtime wife Rosalynn on more than one occasion.
Among his other sports-related activities, Carter was a member of the cross country team during his time at the Naval Academy and was also a tennis, track and basketball player in high school. As an adult, he was an avid softball player.
Carter grew up in Plains, Ga., and served in the Navy for seven years before returning to Georgia to take over his family’s peanut farm business. Carter was a Georgia senator and governor in the 1960s and ’70s and successfully ran for president in 1976. He was diagnosed with cancer in August 2015 but announced in early 2016 that he no longer needed treatment.
Carter entered hospice care back in in February 2023, with The Carter Center saying that in the wake of a series of short hospital stays he “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.”
Carter married his wife, Rosalynn, in 1946. They had three sons and a daughter, as well as several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.