Five years before he died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, former President Jimmy Carter gave his last PEOPLE interview — and one of his last interviews ever — from a busy construction site in Tennessee, where he and wife Rosalynn were helping building houses for those in need, as they have been doing for decades.
At the time, Carter reflected on his years of public service and shared some of the lessons he learned from his longevity and long marriage. (His wife died in 2023 at the age of 96.)
Below is the original PEOPLE story from Carter’s latest interview, published in October 2019.
For the record, Jimmy Carter didn’t expect to live this long either.
He told PEOPLE with a smile while taking a break from helping build Habitat for Humanity homes in Nashville, Tenn. For 36 years, he and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, have led the annual build for Habitat, erecting and repairing more than 4,000 homes.
The partnership has inextricably linked them – Habitat and the most famous supporters of the organization have been there almost from the very beginning.
Recalling the beginning of a volunteer project that would become decades-long and worldwide, President Carter says he and Mrs. Carter didn’t really think about longevity when they took a bus with dozens of others to New York to work on a six-story apartment building in 1984. The couple was already volunteering with Habitat in Georgia when, passing through NYC to speak at a church, President Carter stopped by the Habitat site there and said, “We need to bring some volunteers to help.”
He started the Carter Work Project.
“We knew we had picked up a great and very enjoyable hobby on the side,” he now tells PEOPLE. “We’ve stayed busy doing other things” — including diplomatic work that won the Nobel Peace Prize — “but we’ve dedicated 36 years to Habitat.”
This year alone, the Carters have helped build 21 homes in the Nashville area, expanding the Habitat neighborhood that began about 10 years ago.
“One of the things Jesus taught was, if you have any talents, try to use them for the benefit of others,” says President Carter, now 95. “That’s what Rosa and I both tried to do.”
They arrived in Tennessee just hours after he fell at his home in Plains, Georgia, requiring 14 stitches to his head and leaving him with a nasty dark eye. But if cancer didn’t keep him out of Habitat four years ago, why should this?
“I had the No. 1 priority, which was to come to Nashville to build houses,” he told the crowd the night after his fall, rallying them to begin building for Habitat that week. Next to him, Mrs Carter, 92, said: “I look forward to this week all year.”
Jimmy Carter recalls the first date with his wife – and how he told his mom he knew he was going to marry Rosalynn
Former President Jimmy Carter (right) at the Carter Work Project site with Habitat for Humanity in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this month. AFF-USA/Shutterstock
The oldest of four children born to Lillian Gordy Carter and James Earl Carter Sr., the 39th president — the oldest living in American history — outlived both his parents and each of his siblings by decades. In 2015, when he was diagnosed with the cancer that killed the rest of his family, he prepared for an end that still hadn’t come.
“I just thought I had a few more weeks left, but I was surprisingly calm,” Carter said at the time. “I had a full life, I have thousands of friends… so I was surprisingly relaxed, much more so than my wife.”
Within months, the cancer was gone after successful surgery and innovative immunotherapy treatments. That November, the Carters returned for their annual Habitat build.
“It’s hard to live to be 95,” he tells PEOPLE. “I think the best explanation for that is marrying the best spouse: someone who will take care of you and do things and do things that will challenge you and keep you alive and interested in life.”
‘He never stops’ — inside the surprisingly active life of Jimmy Carter
He and Mrs. Carter, married since 1946, “had a good life together,” he says. Decades of memories bind them together, as do some of their shared hobbies, including bird watching (“Rosa and I saw about 1,300 different species of birds”), tennis (they have a court behind the house) and, yes, skiing – which they took up when he was 62 year.
Now older and physically frail (President Carter actually uses the word “decrepit”), the couple plans only a year in advance. They enjoy occasional breaks in public life from which neither will retire.
“Now when we have a quiet moment, like a birthday or something, we like to stay at home, alone, and enjoy a quiet day in our own house with no visitors and minimal phone calls and emails,” he said. he says.
But there is always more work to do. It is also something to taste, in its own way.
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Former President Jimmy Carter at the Carter Work Project site with Habitat for Humanity in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this month. AFF-USA/Shutterstock
“We can be very proud of the people we meet,” says President Carter.
“Sometimes when we go to a community where we built homes maybe 35 years ago, or 25, 20 years ago, we try to visit those Habitat sites just to look at them and meet some of the longtime homeowners,” he says. “They are very proud of their house. We never find the houses we built with graffiti on the exterior walls or broken windows or unmowed lawns. … They set an example for everyone who lives around [them].”
In 2020, the Carters plan to travel with Habitat to the Dominican Republic.
“I think both mine and Rosa’s mind are almost as good as they used to be, we just have a limited capacity for endurance and strength,” he says. “But we’re still trying to stay busy and do what we do well.”
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