In a celebration fit for a centenarian, the historic Fox theater in Atlanta recently hosted dozens of musical acts and thousands of guests for a concert celebrating the 100th birthday of Georgia’s one-time governor, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
“It’s a way to be together and I think that’s who he is fundamentally,” said Jason Carter, who said he believes the concert, featuring some performers that also campaigned for his grandfather in the 1970s, is a unifying – and bipartisan – way to celebrate what one documentary film director calls the “Rock ‘n Roll President.”
“It’s one of those fundamental human connections that brings people together across geographies, across culture, across any sort of racial dividing lines,” Jason Carter told VOA during a press event ahead of the performances. “You’ll have both Democrats and Republicans here tonight.”
Despite the many speakers, actors, musicians and former presidents who sent video tributes, the one person noticeably absent from the celebration was Jimmy Carter himself. He remains in hospice care at his home 240 kilometers south of Atlanta.
“It’s a 600-person village in the middle of nowhere, and all of his other work at the end of the road in Africa, Mali, South Sudan, has been in those same kinds of 600-person villages,” Jason Carter said.
“He feels a kinship there and he feels a connection and the way that he marks this moment is by being at home.”
Jason Carter said his grandfather will watch the concert broadcast on Georgia Public Television, as he celebrates his historic milestone birthday in Plains, Georgia, not far from where his story began, at the Wise Sanitarium, where on October 1, 1924, Lillian Carter, then a nurse at the facility, gave birth to the first U.S. president to have been born in a hospital. The facility is now called the Lillian G. Carter Nursing Center.
“But the only reason he was born in a hospital was because his mother was working that day,” Jill Stuckey, a Carter family friend, told VOA.
Stuckey serves as superintendent of the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains which includes Carter’s preserved Depression-era boyhood farm, the old Plains High School where Carter studied and the railroad depot Carter converted into his campaign headquarters in his successful 1976 White House bid.
“After the hospice announcement nearly a year ago, I didn’t think we’d be at this point,” Stuckey said during an interview with VOA, standing next to a replica of the famous Resolute Desk from the White House Oval Office, now a big draw for tourists who visit Plains High School.
Stuckey said Plains celebrates its famous neighbor every day, but this historic birthday is marked by serving others.
“We’re naturalizing 100 new citizens in his honor. Thanks to the secretary of the Navy, we’re having four F-18 jets flyover.”
She said another, smaller birthday concert in the Plains High School auditorium is also meant to help the community celebrate the man who rose from being a local peanut farmer to president of the United States.
“He definitely deserves a lot of fanfare, because he’s definitely the greatest person I’ve ever met in my life,” she told VOA.
Carter’s milestone is a bittersweet occasion in Plains, though, it’s the first Carter has spent since his wife, Rosalynn, died last November.
“Seventy-seven-and-a-half years of marriage, to be without your partner, your soul mate you know it’s very, very tough times,” said Stuckey, “It’s tough times on him, but on all of us that knew her, that loved her, the family members.”
Carter’s birthday celebration, which began at the Fox theater in September and ends in Plains October 1, brought his large extended family together, including his great-grandson, Charlie Carter, who hinted it may not be the last time such a gathering occurs.
“No… maybe his 101th?”
Jimmy Carter also holds the record for the longest post-presidential career. After departing the White House in 1981, he and Rosalynn founded the Atlanta-based global nonprofit Carter Center, which fights neglected tropical diseases, promotes peaceful conflict resolution, and monitors elections around the world, causes which led to Carter winning the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
