Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president to live to be 100 years old — a feat made even more incredible by the fact that he was alive for 40% of the nation’s history.
When Carter was born in 1924, former President Calvin Coolidge was nearing the end of his first term and was just a month away from his second presidential election. Coolidge died at age 60 in 1933 when Carter was 9 years old and living in Plains, Georgia, at the height of the Great Depression. At that time, former President Franklin D. Roosevelt was at the beginning of his first term.
Had Coolidge lived as long as Carter, he would have been just four years short of seeing Carter elected president. If Roosevelt had lived to be 100 years old, instead of dying during his third presidential term at age 63, he would have lived through Carter’s presidency, and former President Ronald Reagan would have eulogized him.
Carter’s death shows how young of a nation the United States truly is. Carter lived through the Great Depression, World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, the AIDS epidemic, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the rise of social media, and most recently, the 2024 presidential election, in which President-elect Donald Trump, 78, was elected to a second, nonconsecutive term.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden, 82, the oldest acting president, eulogized Carter during his state funeral. Biden and Carter’s relationship stems back more than 50 years when Biden was a senator in his early 30s, and Carter was a Democratic presidential candidate. Biden was the first sitting senator to endorse Carter’s 1976 presidential run.
Like Carter, Biden will be a one-term president, and both men faced similar challenges during their times in the Oval Office. During Carter’s presidency, the Iranian Revolution broke out, and more than 50 Americans were held hostage for a year. During Biden’s presidency, Russia invaded Ukraine, and Hamas attacked Israel, taking 251 Israeli and some American citizens hostage on Oct. 7, 2023. To this day, hostages remain in Hamas’s hands.
Carter is widely considered by historians as a weak president but a good man. He was married to his wife, Rosalyn Carter, for 77 years, the longest presidential marriage in the country’s history.
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“When I endorsed him for president … it was not only his policies but his character,” Biden said after Jimmy Carter’s death.
The state funeral took place just 11 days before Trump’s inauguration. If Trump serves his entire term, he will become the oldest sitting president in U.S. history.