President Jimmy Carter is surrounded by loved
ones and resting under home Hospice care.
The Carter Center released a statement
Saturday afternoon sharing his decision
to spend his remaining time at his home
in Plains, Georgia, instead of receiving
additional medical intervention.
John Sherrick begins our team coverage
in Carter's hometown of Plains.
John, you are at Maranatha Baptist Church,
where President Carter LED Sunday
school for years and years.
This morning, he himself now the focus of
many of those prayers of the congregation.
Christie, as you know, when President
Carter taught Sunday school here
at Maranatha Baptist Church,
the lessons would start
properly at 10:00 o'clock.
The line to get inside would form around
the church and then he and missus Carter
would stay for the 11:00 o'clock service.
Today, at this service,
the people who will be worshipping here,
not far from where President Carter
is receiving Hospice care at home,
will no doubt in a way be leading
the prayers of people around
the world for his comfort now.
One of the Carter's final public
appearances was here in planes,
their 75th wedding anniversary,
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter
celebrating in July 2021.
Guests who were here included
former President Bill Clinton,
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
Senator Raphael Warnock,
now former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
and the Carter's lifelong friends
and neighbors here in planes.
At the celebration, Jimmy Carter once
again expressed his love for Rosaline.
They met in planes, they married in planes,
and then they went off together to begin.
His career in the Navy.
A career that was cut short when his
father died and he decided they'd
move back to planes to take over the
families peanut warehouse business.
And in the past decades,
as Jimmy Carter would travel all
over the world as president and then
as founder of the Carter Center,
he always came back to planes.
He is rooted here. This is his home.
He would teach Sunday school at Maranatha
Baptist Church as often as he could.
He only stopped in 2020 because of the
pandemic and the challenges of his health.
At age,
but when he taught,
people from around the world would
pack inside the small church to listen.
How many of you think if you do a
good thing or just one other person,
it would make America a better country?
Is that complicated? It's not difficult.
Mr. Carter's Sunday school lessons
would focus on the world and
its problems through his eyes
and heart of faith and hope,
which are no doubt sustaining him
and his family and his neighbors
here in Plains now. Christy.
John an unrelenting faith that he shared
with so many others in recent years,
the former president's
health has been a concern.
In 2015, he revealed that he
had Melanoma and that the skin
cancer had spread to his brain.
Carter underwent a new
form of cancer treatment,
and after three weeks of this therapy,
there were no signs of the
cancer on his brain.
At the time,
he talked about his own mortality.
I didn't go into an attitude of despair
or or anger or anything like that.
I was just completely at ease,
as Rosen would testify.
And I think if you have any
doubts about my veracity,
but, but I've just been very
grateful for that part.
So I'm I'm ready for anything.
In 2017, Mr. Carter was hospitalized
for dehydration while on a habitat
build in Canada, and then two years
later he had a fall at his home in
Plains just before the habitat build.
His face was bruised,
but of course his perseverance shone through.
He was back at work building
a habitat home in Nashville.
And then last year Mr.
Carter made two appearances of note,
both, of course, down in planes.
One was in August to celebrate
his wife Rosalynn's 95th birthday,
and then back in September,
the couple came out.
The 25th Annual Peanut Festival parade.
The former president and
first lady were driven around
planes in this incredible car,
a 1946 Ford Super Deluxe convertible,
the same model and year of the Carter's
car at the time they were married.