Hello everyone, and welcome to a special edition of Amy and TJ. We are coming to you with some sad, some breaking news that the thirty ninth President of the United States, the longest living president here in this country, Jimmy Carter, has died at the age of one hundred.
It happened around three forty five pm on Sunday afternoon at his home in Plains, Georgia, and so many people are now reflecting and remembering a president that so many said was the best former president this country has ever had.
That's almost the leading line in everything you read about him and everything that folks say about him. And it's true. He is the I don't think there's any argument about that, but to the point that people almost forget his presidency. But it's tough to you always mourn than someone's passing. But man, if there's anybody with a life worth celebrating, it's this guy. You hear about his passing, you before you get sad, you almost smile a little and go
oh uh, like wow, what a sweet guy. A sweet life, a sweet story, and almost even a sweet death to a certain degree. At his home planes Georgia at one hundred. He made it to one hundred. I mean, what a life. It's incredible.
It is incredible. It is incredible. And you know we were talking about this. Anyone who has worked in a newsroom, and we've certainly been a newsroom since the mid nineties already had a Jimmy Carter oh bit ready to go. And I have never recalled more moments thinking someone had died or was about to die or could die than being ready and prepared for Jimmy Carter's passing.
And yet it never happened. I mean, think about it. Even recently in twenty nineteen.
He had a fall and that so my grandpa, it happened to him. When you get to a certain ager in your nineties, you fall, you break your hip, that's it.
No, he kept going.
And then four years before that, I think everyone remembers, he had liver cancer. Then he was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma that had spread to his brain.
He thought that was gonna be.
It, right, I mean, he was at that point in his nineties again. So and then months later he announced he was cancer free and no longer needed treatment because of a new type of cancer therapy. Here's the other remarkable thing. He has been in hospice care since February of twenty twenty three, so almost for two years. That is remarkable, and saw the passing of his beloved wife
of seventy seven years, almost a year ago. Actually it was November nineteenth, twenty twenty three that Rosalind passed, and at her funeral, if we remember seeing him, he was weakened, he was feeble, he was in a wheelchair. He couldn't even speak, or chose not to. His daughter Amy read a letter that he had written to her seventy five years ago while he was in the Navy on his behalf, and it was moving and beautiful, but he was in
such poor shape. I think a lot of us thought, well, now that Rosalind's gone and all of he's still he lasted a full year plus.
It sounds morbid, but this happens in every single newsroom you step in. There are folks. I think Queen Elizabeth is one person that there has been no bit in every newsroom ready to go for decades, literally decades. I'm sure they have them for the King now ready to go. I mean, it's just what happens when folks get of that age, and you know, it's going to be a big story when they pass, So this is one that he was holding on. Jimmy Carter would not.
Go yes, and then you had to keep updating.
So I was one of the people who had to read and record these obituaries in anticipation of someone's passing. And so I fully remember reading Jimmy Carter's obituary or reading it into a microphone to be recorded ten years ago, fifteen years ago, and certainly recently people were thinking it was going to happen soon. So this is a guy who I think it's been incredible to see him continue on and continue on strong. His grandson actually talked about
how Jimmy was. It's weird to say Jimmy Jimmy Carter. President Carter was even in the last few years, and while in hospice, his grandson Jason said that Jimmy Carter remained mentally and emotionally engaged in what was going on around him. And in the news we got word that he voted in this past election, just after turning one hundred for Vice President Kamala Harris.
He did it by mail.
He didn't actually go into a voting booth, but he was emotionally intellectually engaged in the world.
You know, well, I'm trying to think of stories, but we didn't hear any ever coming out because we saw him active even in his nineties about him having any type of mental decline. No, he was active around the world literally and engaged in conflict resolution or election fairness. He was engaged. And I'm trying it. I'm stopping for a moment, but we did not have those reports about him. So to hear his family say that about him, I guess makes sense.
It's pretty cool.
And I was you know, you said earlier when we started the podcast about him, that you, even though you know he's passed, you still feel like you want a smile, that he brings a smile to your face thinking about how he lived his life. And there are a lot of things we think of when we think of Jimmy Carter, but I for me, maybe this is the emotional woman in me, but the one I remember the story that I think stands out so much, even beyond all of
his incredible political achievements. And he's a Nobel Peace Prize winner, just one of four US presidents ever to have that honor, so obviously he's accomplished so much professionally. But I think of the love story. I think of the love story between him and Rosalind, and I just think sometimes we need those types of stories to speak when things feel bleak.
And I was reading.
Part of I mentioned it earlier, the letter that his daughter Amy read, that he wrote to her while he was serving in the navy. We were learning about him as we were going back into his history seven years as a naval officer, and.
I forgot a lot of that served the second nuclear submarine in the US history.
What if you forget all of the early daring things that some of these great men have done, and Jimmy Carter is among them.
But while he was in service, he wrote, Can I just.
Read a little bit of the letter that Amy read, because this just just makes me so happy. This is Jimmy Carter to his wife Rosalind, while he was serving in the navy. My darling, every time I have ever been away from you, I have been thrilled when I returned to discover just how wonderful you are. While I am away, I try to convince myself that you really are not could not be as sweet and beautiful as I remember. But when I see you, I fall in love with you all over again.
Wow. Okay, that's good.
That's amazing.
Okay, that's good.
That is so sweet, And it's been pretty cool not He's survived by his four children. They had four children together, John who was Jack Chip, Jeff, and their daughter Amy, who I think we all remember being in the White House.
I remember seeing her so much in all the news coverage.
But he also had eleven grandchildren, fourteen great grand children. And I just love that the love story between him and Rosalind was, yes for us all to witness, but for them to benefit from it. It's just it was a huge, beautiful part of his incredible story that I've had a lot of. I've actually enjoyed getting to know him even more reading about all that he accomplished in his life.
You stop folks on the street these days, I mean, how much can you can folks tell you about his presidency versus what they can tell you about his life. I guess he had forty plus years outside of I mean, he was a fairly young guy when he left the White House mid fifties. I think it was that's a lot of life. Yeah, and he did a lot with it afterwards. That's he is known as a as not. I don't know. What can you tell me about his presidency.
We can tell you about some of the failures and why he might have left the White House is yes, I can tell you about elections. I can tell you about conflict resolution. I can tell you about disease eradication. Right, all these things I know I can see him doing after his presidency.
You know what's cool. I think so much of our.
Disdain or even just I don't know, you're just not into politics because of politicians, right, they aren't what they seem. They're in it for the power and the greed and the career. He wasn't in it for any of those things. And I think everyone can agree he was there for all the right reasons. So, yes, he might have had an average one term presidency. But to your point, he did so much with that platform beyond the presidency that is remarkable. I mean, I did find out.
I don't. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this.
I didn't realize that while he was president, several of his victories included establishing the Department of Education, which we'll see what happens with Trump because He's talked about completely disassembling the Department of Education, so that would be an interesting moment, and then also the Department of Energy.
I think a lot of.
Us who are a certain age remember his probably his most notable achievement the Camp David Accords. He broke with the deal between Israel and Egypt that led to Egypt Israel peace treaty the following year. So that was kind of the big, big notch in his belt. But then conversely, the Iran hostage crisis pretty much ended his presidency. It's the reason, one of the many reasons, but probably the biggest reason why he was not re elected.
You hit on something great there at the beginning about how he's viewed. If you watched him in his life after he left the White House, you would never look at that guy and think he was a Democrat, former Republican, or a former Democratic president. He was a former president. And when you start viewing people as human beings and just as humanitarians and just as I don't know, as people who aren't on one side or the other, maybe
you start to get viewed differently. But yeah, he wasn't partisan once he left the White House.
That's a really good point, and.
He took his platform and created the Carter Presidential Center. That was in nineteen eighty two, and that is what ultimately ended up leading to his Nobel Peace Prize in two thousand and two because he took that foundation and he focused on ending conflicts, on promoting human rights and democracy, youth at, preventing disease, all of those things. He volunteered to mediate disputes between the US and North Korea and Libya. He all remembered Sorry Habitat for Humanity in nineteen eighty four,
that's an Atlanta based organization. He and Rosalind joined that and were huge advocates and supporters of that organization.
So his life was truly of service.
Also interesting, I didn't know this. In between his seven years as a naval officer and entering politics in nineteen sixty two, he was a two term state senator. He for eight years was simply a farmer. He was he worked his family farm, the peanut farm in plains, Georgia, Maya.
I don't know why I remember this story, my mom telling me this story about everybody, the election happening, whatever year that was, seventy seventy sixty six, she said, Yeah, we all went to bed one night and woke up and said, who's president. It was such a surprise. It's peanut farmer from Georgia is now the president of the United States. I always remember being funny as a kid telling me that story.
Yeah, because you were born in nineteen seventy seven. So the president that was the current president was Jimmy Carter.
When and I remember, oh, my brother and I.
Used to imitate Jimmy Carter from Georgia, the peanut farmer, like we would try to do his accent.
And I mean I remember doing that as.
A good and you know, we would we would put up the peace side peace because even then, as a little kid, I knew that Jimmy Carter stood for peace. It's it's kind of funny, but I have such a memory of that, and it's something he stood for his entire life. It wasn't just in the moment. It wasn't just to win an election, which is pretty cool. Also, I was looking this up and I think the numbers we right. He wrote and I want to say at least but he wrote thirty two books. From what I can gather.
It's impressive.
Thirty two books.
They range from his political philosophy to his deep faith. He was a Christian man, he actually was born again a Christian, and a.
Book all about his mother. I mean, he he had so much to say.
And the cool thing is that it lives on, you know, not just in his family, but in his words and in his books and all thirty two of them.
Apparently that's a lot of writing.
That's so important. And again it's we we're so aware of him in news stories when he pops up here or there, there's a birthday, or he does something daring, or he's somewhere around the world. But it has been interesting and just reading up on him and you go, oh, oh, that's right. Oh I forgot about that. Oh I didn't know that, And that's a lot of that is has been interesting. I forgot completely even that he was a naval officer.
Yeah, I don't know that I knew he was.
Forgot that completely right. And how he made his way up through the ranks, and how he had one career kind of derailed, if you will, because his father passed and he went back to run the family peanut farms.
Pretty remarkable. That's a huge He was a peanut farmer. I said he was the son of a peanut farmer, but he actually became a peanut farmer himself, in between a storied naval career and a pretty incredible political career that he rose very quickly. You know, it's funny. I met him one time in my life. I was in my second year at w CBD TV two Action News in Charleston, South Carolina, and he came in. He was actually, I think, being interviewed by I actually think it was
Good Morning America. We were the ABC affiliate, so he just used our studios to do the talk back, and everybody was so excited, and we didn't have phones back then, but we had cameras and people were getting pictures taken with him, and I didn't want to bother him. I shook his hand, I met him, but I so badly wanted to get a picture, but then I just didn't want to add to him feeling overwhelmed, so I didn't
get one. And I it's always one of those moments where like I wish I had, Like I just didn't want to bother him, but and I think maybe if I had had a phone and you could do a selfie, it would have been easier, but I just felt like I didn't want to join in on the line waiting to get a picture with him.
Don't feel that way. You You have a story to tell, you have an experience to tell, and reducing Yule's relationship just a photo would have changed the dynamic and change the story.
That's true.
And I remember watching him be so kind and so patient, and that's why I was like, oh, I don't want to add to but I remember thinking how I mean, he was an older man, like, Wow, he's getting up there.
And to think that now, I mean that was seriously almost thirty years ago.
He was in his like mid or late seventies, and I thought, oh, you know, he's getting up there.
If you had told me, hey, Amy, in thirty years, he's still going to be around, like what you got, it's remarkable remark because to think that I was that young and thought he was that old and he just now passed, that's a pretty dang good life.
I don't know what his his regimen was, what his yea, his diet was. I don't know if he's ever put that out. I mean just maybe it's just good jeans. Who knows what it is? Or just good living, or maybe the Good Lord said we need this one to stick around for a while because he's doing good. Who knows. Yeah, but that dude and his wife, what a year Yeah apart, she was ninety.
Six, she was ninety six, I believe, Yes, unbelievable. That's a sweet, amazing life. You don't hear about love stories and lives like that. And yeah, they are together now. I love thinking about that. We were also getting we want to mention a lot of reaction, as you might imagine, from former presidents, but even the current one, President Joe Biden, and we were going to read a couple of the some of the really lovely words that we're hearing from
our leaders about the passing of Jimmy Carter. So I'll start with President Biden. He says, today America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman, and humanitarian. Over six decades, we had the honor of calling Jimmy Carter a dear friend. But what's extraordinary about Jimmy Carter, though, is that millions of people throughout America and the world who never met him thought of him as a dear friend as well.
I think that is so true, and I was going to skip down to the end of this because I thought this was really sweet. He said, to all of the young people in this nation, and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning, the good life, study Jimmy Carter, a man of principal faith and humility. He showed that we are a great nation because we are a good people,
decent and honorable, courageous and compassionate, humble and strong. And President Biden said, he let a few of.
The details out.
He's going to be ordering an official state funeral. It'll be held in Washington, d c. For Jimmy Carter, who he says, he called I love that he gave all of his titles. I'm gonna read them because the're really cool. Thirty ninth President of the United States, seventy sixth Governor of Georgia, Lieutenant of the United States Navy, graduate of the United States Naval Academy, and favorite son of Plains Georgia, who gave his full life in service to God and country.
That chokes me up even to hear that. And that's that was beautiful.
That's really really well said yeah by President President Biden. A lot of the you know a lot of I was reading here from former President George W. Bush and it kind of went in line. I'm not going to read this whole thing here, but I'll pluck this line out, and it said he was a man of deeply held convictions. He was loyal to his family, his community, and his country. And this is the part I love ropes. He said,
President Carter dignified the office. Wow, and his efforts to leave behind a better world didn't end with the presidency. That's awesome to hear that he dignified the office.
That just gave me chills to hear that. That is really cool. That's beautiful.
We're also hearing from President Bill Clinton. He talked about how he and Hillary were warning the passing of President
Jimmy Carter. He mentioned, this is what President Clinton said, from his commitment to civil rights as a state senator and governor of Georgia, to his efforts as president to protect our natural resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, make energy conservation and national priority, return the Panama Canal to Panama, secure peace between injured in Israel, to his post presidential efforts at the Carter Center, supporting honest elections,
advancing peace, combating disease, promoting democracy. I mean, he just goes on and on to list all of the things that Jimmy Carter did to make this country and this world a better place. Also mentions about how he was proud to have presented the Middle of Freedom to President Carter and Rosalind in nineteen ninety nine. I hadn't realized that either, But cool that President Clinton mentioned that as well.
You know, there's a I'm reading through what the Obama's their statement, and it's very personal and it's a longer reading, and they kind of weave through a story that lands on this President Carter's decency, right, And I guess that's I know, people say nice things about people after they passed, right, But it seems like there's a theme that to this guy, and to a certainly to a politician, that's it stands out. So that's really kind of cool to see. And he
ended up in office because of scandal. He was one that was helping to get our moral.
Balance after the Watergate scandal.
Yeah, so it's it's just to see now people talk about him in this way. Is it's kind of cool? Now we have to mention that President elect Trump, but out of statements as well, it has some Trump.
Yes here, I've got it actually right in front of me. He said, this is quoting President elect Trump. I just heard of the news about the passing of President Jimmy Carter. Those of us who have been fortunate to have served as president understand this is a very exclusive club and only we can relate to the enormous responsibility of leading the greatest nation in history. He does go on to
talk about President Carter here now. Next, he says, the challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country, and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we owe him a debt of gratitude. He also just says that he and Milania are thinking of the Carter family and urges the rest of us to keep them in our hearts and prayers.
He did land the plane. There was a line about President Carter in there.
Look, I who know, did somebody help him craft that. Some people would say that's great that he just well Friday his own thing in the moment boomed, but it.
Was authentic to the President. Electron was it not I believe it was, indeed, but I do think that the cool thing.
And I hope I was telling my daughters about his passing, and they don't know a lot about him.
He's not some social media star.
He's certainly probably did not connect so much with some of our younger generations. But if anyone is listening, and I plan to send some links to my daughters, because we can all learn something from how Jimmy Carter lived, and not just for the fame and fortune of it, or for the power or the political power of it, but simply to do good. And I think that that was just a genuine, authentic thing about him that no
one can dispute. Whether you liked his policies or not, you knew he was a decent guy.
He was a good guy. He was in it for the right reasons.
And it's wonderful to see him celebrate it in that way, and wonderful for him if to your point, the younger generation, your daughters can take this moment and learn anything about him. He used that office, if nothing else, he used the office. He lost that office right he was he was defeated, wasn't reelected, but he used his platform and did more out of office than he ever did in the four years he was in the White House. So let that
be a lesson and a reminder to us all. But it's life worth remembering and studying and mourning and celebrating all the same time.
I love that, and it's a you know, you just kind of I know we're wrapping up, but you just that definitely hit a nerve with me to know that you can lose an election.
And he didn't.
He didn't take that and lick his wounds and go off and no, he kept being of service, He kept showing up, he kept doing what he knew he could do to make the world a better place, and that defeat didn't define him. And I think that's so cool and something we can all take with us into this week. So thank you for being with us here on the Amy t G Podcast. We will see you soon, especially on morning Run, so check us out.