HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Jimmy Carter Is the First U.S. President to Live to 100

Carter’s grandson said his hospice care has allowed “the rest of the country and the world to really reflect on him. That’s been a really gratifying time.”

Jimmy Carter is celebrating his 100th birthday on Tuesday, as he becomes the first American president to live a century. The peanut farmer turned Nobel Prize winner is expected to mark the occasion at the one-story home in Plains, Georgia, that he built with his late wife, Rosalynn, in the 1960s—he’s lived eight decades of his life in the town of 600. To commemorate Carter’s longstanding record of charitable deeds, thousands of volunteers are gathered in St. Paul, Minnesota this week to build 30 Habitat for Humanity homes in honor of him and Rosalynn. Among them are country music stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who began working with Carter after Hurricane Katrina. Carter and the former first lady volunteered for Habitat for Humanity for four decades—and he was still building homes for the needy at 95. The former president has been in home hospice care for 19 months, which his grandson Jason told the Associated Press “has been a chance for our family to reflect and then for the rest of the country and the world to really reflect on him. That’s been a really gratifying time.” Only five other presidents—George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, John Adams, and Herbert Hoover—have lived past 90.