Tuesday marks 39th U.S. President Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday

PLAINS, Ga. - Oct. 1 marks the centennial birthday of the United States’ 39th President Jimmy Carter, becoming the first U.S. president to do so.

Carter began his dedication to a lifetime of service by enrolling in Maryland’s Naval Academy and serving seven years as a naval officer. Born a Georgia native, Carter retired from military service and pursued a career in state politics, eventually becoming Georgia’s governor.

In 1977, Carter won the presidential race as the nominee of the Democratic Party and went on to become a strong advocate and facilitator of peace and global diplomacy.

Serving a term immediately after former President Richard Nixon, Carter’s international policy stood in stark contrast to the prior administration as he viewed the role of the United States government to be a stabilizer of regions in turmoil. “For too many years, we’ve been willing to adopt the flawed and erroneous principles and tactics of our adversaries, sometimes abandoning our own values for theirs,” said Carter in 1977.

“We’ve fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is sometimes best quenched with water.”

Carter’s major accomplishments during his presidential tenure include the overseeing of the Camp David Accords, an agreement which at the time brought peace between Israel and Egypt.

Carter had met with both Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat individually in the months before inviting them both out to the United States to work on the peace treaty, serving as an example of how to conduct foreign policy with dignity and purpose.

Carter’s term is generally looked back at with fondness, although at the time of his service he hosted a historically low approval rating due to failures in the economy, perceived weakness on the front of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and administrational failure to retrieve American hostages being kept at the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

It is important to note that since then, it has been anecdotal confirmed that the subsequent Ronald Reagan administration, and Carter’s election opponent, orchestrated a secret deal with the Iranian government to delay the release of the American hostages until after the 1980 election between the two.

Since his term as president, Carter has been devoted to the creation of the Carter Center, described as a “nongovernmental organization that helps to improve lives by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy and preventing diseases,” on the Center’s website.

Carter was nominated for the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

Carter has spent his golden years living with his family and in hospice care in Plains, Georgia. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has named Tuesday “Jimmy Carter Day” in his honor.

Trip Tagle is a second-year majoring in digital and print journalism. To contact them, please email tnt5403@psu.edu.