SEPTEMBER 30, 2024: UNDATED (AP)- A benefit concert and the construction of 30 new homes are among the many events marking President Jimmy Carter ‘s 100th birthday on Oct. 1, 2024. Considering the former president’s long legacy as a philanthropist, it’s no surprise that he wants any gift-giving to go to other people. The star-studded concert at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre earlier in September raised money to support the international programs of The Carter Center, which Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded in 1982 with the mission to “ wage peace, fight disease, and build hope.” The concert airs on Georgia Public Broadcasting on Oct. 1. Meanwhile, thousands of Habitat for Humanity volunteers gathered Monday to build 30 homes in St. Paul, Minnesota, over five days, led by country music giants Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who worked alongside the Carters for years, beginning with projects in Hurricane Katrina’s disaster area. The Carters’ relationship with Habitat for Humanity stretches back 40 years, to when the couple went to New York City on a build in 1984. “The image of a president of the United States sleeping in a church basement and physically helping rehab a tenement building captured the world,” said Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International. The Carters went on to build homes annually for 35 years. Carter repeatedly said that working with the organization was a way he put his Christian faith into action, Reckford recalled. Cleora Taylor, a medical assistant, met the Carters in August 2018 when they helped build 41 new homes in South Bend and Mishawaka, Indiana. Years later, Taylor recalled how the former president greeted her by name and knew about her children, including her daughter, who was 11 at the time and has autism. “It means so much to me that he knew me,” said Taylor, speaking from her living room in the home The Carters helped her build, on a street named Carter Court. “He’s just such a good, welcoming, humble guy. I’m just glad to be a part of a legacy that he’s leaving behind.” Presidential historian Cassandra Newby-Alexander, professor of Virginia Black history and culture at Norfolk State University, said the strength of Carter’s legacy is in his morality. Unlike many who claim to care about the disadvantaged, Carter has shown that they — and not power or money — are his main concern, Newby-Alexander said. “I think he has probably done more personally in his post-presidency than anyone else because he’s not out there looking for attention,” she said. “He’s looking to change things. He’s not out there trying to make money for himself. He’s out there trying to live the life of a Christian — a true Christian, one who cares about the poor and the homeless and the children.” While leadership in philanthropy is often gauged by the size of donations or the heft of assets under management, Carter’s giving came in the form of his seemingly ceaseless personal effort. From building homes to monitoring elections and pursuing the elimination of a painful but neglected disease, Carter used his stature and presence to rally resources and attention to his causes. “In so many ways, he set the standard for how presidents should be in their post-presidency, as someone who is going to continue to do good, someone who’s going to continue to positively impact society,” Newby-Alexander said. Carter’s legacy of giving back also includes working to eradicate Guinea worm, a commitment The Carter Center has made since 1986. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had identified the disease as a candidate for eradication after smallpox. Carter took up the mantle, vowing to outlive the last such parasite. “To the demise of the worm” is the catchphrase, according to Dr. Jordan Tappero, deputy director for neglected tropical diseases at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given $263 million to The Carter Center since 2000, mostly to support its work on Guinea worm. The number of cases has fallen from 3.5 million when the center started to only 13 known cases in humans in 2022, and now focuses on closing the “last mile” of infections in several African countries. Even after Carter entered hospice in February 2023, Tappero said, Carter was still contacting his team. “He still wants updates and wants to know what’s going on because his mind will never stop until the last heartbeat,” Tappero said, speaking in March 2023. Carter engaged directly with health ministries and heads of state to muster their commitment to public health interventions, said Steven M. Hilton of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. Since 1991, the foundation said it has committed nearly $50 million to The Carter Center for eradicating Guinea worm and to support its work treating and controlling trachoma, a disease that can cause irreversible blindness. Hilton considers Carter to be “a remarkable man with a deeply compassionate heart.” “I feel fortunate to have witnessed firsthand the strength of his character, including his dedication to seeing enormous humanitarian challenges through to the end,” Hilton said in a statement. Tappero draws inspiration from the Carters’ humility, energy and dedication. “If we all had one-fifth of his energy, commitment and passion,” he said, “the world would be a much better place.” Taylor, who lives near South Bend, Indiana, said she saw that commitment firsthand as Carter, 93 at the time, helped her put up a kitchen wall in her four-bedroom home. “It was just so amazing that he still was out here, outside at that age, working with us,” she said. “It made us want to work harder.” She still gets emotional thinking about that week, an incredible opportunity for her and her four kids. “Not only did I get to meet Jimmy Carter and his wife and his children and hundreds of volunteers, other celebrities, I get to own a piece of the world. I get to own a piece of land,” she said. “I never thought that I would be able to do something like that, being a single mother. And for them to have to put so much into it, the volunteers and for Jimmy Carter to actually be here? It was amazing for people to care like he cares.”   SEPTEMBER 28, 2024: UNDATED (AP)- Already the longest-lived of the 45 men to serve as U.S. president, Jimmy Carter is about to reach the century mark. Carter remains under home hospice care and will turn 100 on Tuesday (Oct. 1, 2024). Carter has seen the U.S. population nearly triple. The U.S. has about 330 million residents. There were about 114 million in 1924. And for all the shifts in U.S. politics, some things stay the same. Or at least come back around. Carter was born in an era of isolationism, protectionism and white Christian nationalism. All three of those elements are prominent features of the right in Donald Trump’s Republican Party. Extended version: UNDATED (AP)- Already the longest-lived of the 45 men to serve as U.S. president, Jimmy Carter is about to reach the century mark. The 39th president, who remains under home hospice care, will turn 100 on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, celebrating in the same south Georgia town where he was born in 1924. Here are some notable markers for Carter, the nation and the world over his long life. Booms most everywhere — but not Plains Carter has seen the U.S. population nearly triple. The U.S. has about 330 million residents; there were about 114 million in 1924 and 220 million when Carter was inaugurated in 1977. The global population has more than quadrupled, from 1.9 billion to more than 8.1 billion. It already had more than doubled to 4.36 billion by the time he became president. That boom has not reached Plains, where Carter has lived more than 80 of his 100 years. His wife Rosalynn, who died in 2023 at age 96, also was born in Plains. Their town comprised fewer than 500 people in the 1920s and has about 700 today; much of the local economy revolves around its most famous residents. When James Earl Carter Jr. was born, life expectancy for American males was 58. It’s now 75. TV, radio and presidential maps NBC first debuted a red-and-blue electoral map in the 1976 election between then-President Gerald Ford, a Republican, and Carter, the Democratic challenger. But NBC’s John Chancellor made Carter’s states red and Ford’s blue. Some other early versions of color electoral maps used yellow and blue because red was associated with Soviet and Chinese communism. It wasn’t until the 1990s that networks settled on blue for Democratic-won states and red for GOP-won states. “Red state” and “blue state” did not become a permanent part of the American political lexicon until after the disputed 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Carter was 14 when Franklin D. Roosevelt made the first presidential television appearance. Warren Harding became the first radio president two years before Carter’s birth. Attention shoppers There was no Amazon Prime in 1924, but you could order a build-it-yourself house from a catalog. Sears Roebuck Gladstone’s three-bedroom model went for $2,025, which was slightly less than the average worker’s annual income. Walmart didn’t exist, but local general stores served the same purpose. Ballpark prices: loaf of bread, 9 cents; gallon of milk, 54 cents; gallon of gas, 11 cents. Inflation helped drive Carter from office, as it has dogged President Joe Biden. The average gallon in 1980, Carter’s last full year in office, was about $3.25 when adjusted for inflation. That’s just 3 cents more than AAA’s current national average. From suffragettes to Kamala Harris The 19th Amendment that extended voting rights to women — almost exclusively white women at the time — was ratified in 1920, four years before Carter’s birth. The Voting Rights Act that widened the franchise to Black Americans passed in 1965 as Carter was preparing his first bid for Georgia governor. Now, Carter is poised to cast a mail ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris. She would become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office. Grandson Jason Carter said the former president is holding on in part because he is excited about the chance to see Harris make history. Immigration, isolationism and ‘America First’ For all the shifts in U.S. politics, some things stay the same. Or at least come back around. Carter was born in an era of isolationism, protectionism and white Christian nationalism — all elements of the right in the ongoing Donald Trump era. In 2024, Trump is promising the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, while tightening legal immigration. He has said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Five months before Carter was born, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924. The law created the U.S. Border Patrol and sharply curtailed immigration, limiting admission mostly to migrants from western Europe. Asians were banned entirely. Congress described its purpose plainly: “preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.” The Ku Klux Klan followed in 1925 and 1926 with marches on Washington promoting white supremacy. Trump also has called for sweeping tariffs on foreign imports, part of his “America First” agenda. In 1922, Congress enacted tariffs intended to help U.S. manufacturers. After stock market losses in 1929, lawmakers added the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, ostensibly to help American farmers. The Great Depression followed anyway. In the 1930s, as Carter became politically aware, the political right that countered FDR was driven in part by a movement that opposed international engagement. Those conservatives’ slogan: “America First.” America’s and Carter’s pastime Carter is the Atlanta Braves’ most famous fan. Jason Carter says the former president still enjoys watching his favorite baseball team. In the 1990s, when the Braves were annual features in the October playoffs, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were often spotted in the owner’s box with media mogul Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, then Turner’s wife. The Braves moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee between Carter’s failed run for governor in 1966 and his victory four years later. Then-Gov. Carter was sitting in the first row of Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium on April 9, 1974, when Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s career record. When Carter was born, the Braves were still in Boston, their original city. Ruth had just completed his fifth season for the New York Yankees. He had hit 284 home runs to that point (still 430 short of his career total) and the original Yankee Stadium — “The House that Ruth Built” — had been open less than 18 months. Booze, Billy and Billy Beer Prohibition had been in effect for four years when Carter was born and wouldn’t be lifted until he was 9. The Carters were never prodigious drinkers. They served only wine at state dinners and other White House functions, though it’s a common misconception that they did so because of their Baptist mores. It was more because Carter has always been frugal: He didn’t want taxpayers or the residence account (his and Rosalynn’s personal money) to cover more expensive hard liquor. Carter’s younger brother Billy, who owned a Plains gas station and died in 1988, had different tastes. He marketed his own brand, Billy Beer, once Carter became president. News sources reported that Billy Carter snagged a $50,000 annual licensing fee from one brewer. That’s about $215,000 today. The president’s annual salary at the time was $200,000 — it’s now $400,000. The debt: More Carter frugality The Times Square debt clock didn’t debut until Carter was in his early 60s and out of the White House. But for anyone counting the $35 trillion debt, Carter doesn’t merit much mention. The man who would wash Ziploc bags to reuse them added less than $300 billion to the national debt, which stood below $1 trillion when he left office. Other presidents Carter has lived through 40% of U.S. history since the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and more than a third of all U.S. administrations since George Washington took office in 1789 — nine before Carter was president, his own and seven since. When Carter took office, just one president, John Adams, had lived to be 90. Since then, Ford, Ronald Reagan, Carter and George H.W. Bush all reached at least 93.