Former President Jimmy Carter, 98, is receiving palliative care at his home in Georgia this week. It has been 42 years since he left office, giving him the distinction of being the longest living “ex-president” in our republic’s history. Carter certainly made the best of his post-presidency, speaking out emphatically and courageously on human rights issues and, along with his wife Rosalyn, dedicating himself to building homes for people in need through Habitat for Humanity. He will leave behind a powerful legacy and the good works he undertook will continue on through the Carter Center.
President Carter visited Dorchester once during his time in the White House. In October 1979, he was the featured speaker at the dedication of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on Columbia Point.

“This library, this repository of facts and ideas, will feed history with a permanent record of the dreams of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and also the realization of those dreams,” Carter said during his address outside the I.M. Pei- designed building. “In America, the records of a great political leader will not be threatened by succeeding political regimes which might fear them, because we are a nation committed not only to freedom but also to the pursuit of truth.”

While his words were warmly received, the ceremony was not without its awkward moments. The incumbent Democrat was facing an imminent, insurgent challenge in his primary re-election from US Sen. Ted Kennedy, who also offered stirring remarks at the dedication of his late brother’s memorial library. The 1980 campaign season ended bitterly for both men and, eventually, Ronald Reagan unseated the gentleman peanut farmer in an electoral romp.

Carter returned to the Kennedy Library in 2014 for a forum that focused on his book, “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power.” He spoke graciously and at length about his efforts to extend and preserve democratic elections in 99 countries across the world. He might have found it hard to believe then that just eight years later he would be called on to denounce the conspiracy to overturn the results of our own nation’s presidential election.

In a Jan. 2022 OpEd in the New York Times entitled “I Fear for Our Democracy,” Carter castigated those who persist in spreading the great lie that the 2020 election was illegitimate or stolen.

“I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally – the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongmen politicians who seek more than to grow their own power – has become dangerously fragile at home… Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss. ... Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late.”

Sadly, that will be a far more difficult task without one of our greatest statesmen and moral leaders. Thank you, Mr. President, for your service.