Jimmy Carter Dies at 100, Had Tuscaloosa Ties

Former Democrat President Jimmy Carter, the "Man from Plains," has died at 100 years old.

In September, the biggest names in the political, entertainment and sports worlds joined the extended Carter family and 4,000 others in Atlanta to wish the nation's longest-living ex-chief executive a happy birthday.

Carter was a peanut farmer, U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Navy submariner, Sunday School teacher, Georgia legislator and governor before surprisingly winning the presidency from Gerald Ford amid the aftermath of the Nixon Watergate scandal. However, Carter's inability to end the Iran Hostage Crisis, inflation and high gasoline prices limited him to one term in the White House. He lost in a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Carter's death was announced in a social media post by the Carter Center in Atlanta this afternoon. “Our founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia,” the center said in posting about his death on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). It added in the statement that he died peacefully, surrounded by his family.

Carter had notable ties to Alabama and Tuscaloosa. He visited Alabama Governor George Wallace to seek his support when he announced his presidential run in 1975. He was childhood friends with prominent Tuscaloosa figure, the late Martha Ellen McArthur Johnson and keyboardist Chuck Leavell, who grew up in Tuscaloosa, and campaigned for Carter as a member of Georgia's legendary Allman Brothers Band.

“He really was the rock-and-roll president,” Leavell, was quoted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as saying during Carter's September birthday celebration. But more than that, Leavell said, Carter always understood music as something “that brings people together.”

Tuscaloosa political leader and 27-year Tuscaloosa County Courthouse employee Martha Ellen McArthur Johnson died in 2014, but she knew Carter well. The Americus, GA native grew up as a friend of the Carter family, co-chaired Carter's local campaigns in 1976 and 1980 and was elected a Carter delegate to the Democratic National Convention each of those years.

"Jimmy Carter is a man of faith," Johnson told this reporter during a 1975 interview about her relationship with Carter and his family. "It does not matter what is politically acceptable, what matters to him is doing the right thing, looking out for those with the least, those that have been harmed most by society"

Johnson was not surprised her longtime friend won the Nobel Peace Prize for his Middle East peace efforts. "Jimmy has always been about bringing people together.," she stated for a story on his selection.

That faith was shown throughout his whole life and nowhere more brightly than his teaching Sunday School in Plains, every Sunday he was able, even while president. He also partnered with Alabamians and UA graduates Millard and Linda Fuller, founders of Habitat for Humanity, to build houses in the U.S. and across the world for those in need of a better place to live.

Carter and the late First Lady Roselyn Carter lived in the same modest ranch-style home where they raised their four children before running for political office. The same house in which he passed into history today.