Seven months after entering hospice, Jimmy Carter defied expectations with his 99th birthday on Sunday.
The crowds gathered in Jimmy Carter’s tiny hometown last weekend knew the former president hadn’t been seen in public this year. After seven months in hospice, on the eve of his 99th birthday, they knew he could no longer climb the steps to a balcony overlooking the annual Plains Peanut Festival.
So when a black Chevy Suburban driven by a Secret Service agent slowly turned onto Main Street last Saturday morning, there were gasps, and then cheers.
There in the back seat was Carter, holding hands with Rosalynn, his wife of 77 years. The waves of applause only stopped when a “Happy Birthday” serenade began.
“I’m overwhelmed,” said Esther Rechenmacher, 93, who said she would cherish what she expects will be her last glimpse of Carter.
The drive through downtown Plains was just the latest surprise from Carter, who has already lived longer than any other former president, surpassing George H.W. Bush, who passed away at 94. He has witnessed the election of seven successors and outlived two: Bush and Ronald Reagan.
On Sunday, Carter plans to have a low-key birthday with Rosalynn at the Plains home they built in 1961 and where they spend most days sitting together. But publicity around his milestone is expected to draw more visitors to this tiny town and its National Park Service sites that include Carter’s boyhood home that had no running water or electricity when he was a child, and the train depot that served as Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign headquarters.
Aimee Burgamy, an Atlanta schoolteacher, sees Carter as a living link to a bygone era in America. “The politics around here are not Jimmy Carter’s politics anymore,” she said. “But everyone came out for him. We love him.”
Carter is a Democrat, while many in Plains are Republican, including the longtime mayor, L. E. “Boze” Godwin III.
Godwin, 80, calls Carter “an honest man, a very intelligent man.” He said their differing political views never meant they couldn’t work together to improve the town. He has known Carter nearly all his life; the former president was his Boy Scout troop leader. After Carter served in the U.S. Navy, he came home in 1953 and Godwin remembers seeing him sell peanuts out of the back of his truck.
