The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

President Carter goes home

The most accomplished former President of the past century has decided to spend his last few days at home in Georgia:

Former President Jimmy Carter, who at 98 is the longest living president in American history, has decided to forgo further medical treatment and will enter hospice care at his home in Georgia, the Carter Center announced on Saturday.

“After a series of short hospital stays, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention,” the center said in a statement posted on Twitter. “He has the full support of his family and his medical team. The Carter family asks for privacy during this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers.”

The center did not elaborate on what conditions had prompted the recent hospital visits or his decision to enter hospice care. Mr. Carter has survived a series of health crises in recent years, including a bout with the skin cancer melanoma, which spread to his liver and brain, as well as repeated falls.

The former president lives with his wife, Rosalynn Carter, 95, in a modest ranch house that the couple built in Plains, Ga., in 1961.

Mr. Carter has defied illness and death for years, outlasting two presidents who followed him as well as his own vice president. He became the longest-living president in March 2019 when he passed former President George H.W. Bush, who died the previous November.

I met him once, at university, literally bumping into him as he came out of the library with his security detail. The USSS seemed amused, and let me walk next to him for about a hundred meters before I peeled off. I did get him to sign a note card for me, and later I got to ask him a question—the one I'd written on the note card he signed—at the speech he gave later that day.

He's a mensch. I'm sorry to see him go.

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