Former United States president Jimmy Carter became the only American president to ever reach the centennial mark as he celebrated his 100th birthday on Tuesday.
The former peanut farmer and one-time Georgia governor, known for a strong sense of modest decency, is set to celebrate his milestone in Plains, Georgia — a rural hamlet with a population of approximately 600 — over 19 months after announcing he was going into hospice care. The Democratic ex-president will spend his birthday in the home he and his late wife Rosalynn had built in Plains in the 1960s as he will no longer be regularly appearing in public.
It will include a lunch with some 20 members of his extended family, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“We are thrilled that the president from this little town is going to be the only president to ever live to be 100 years old,” Jill Stuckey, superintendent of the National Park Service’s Jimmy Carter historical site and longtime family friend, told AFP.
She spoke from Plains High School, where Carter graduated in 1941 and which now serves as the visitors center for the national park that features sites from his early life, such as the nearby peanut farm where he grew up.
On Tuesday, the school will hold not just an evening concert featuring local and other musicians but also a naturalisation ceremony for 100 new US citizens.
The flyover, which includes four Navy F-18s, according to Stuckey, is particularly fitting since Carter worked on the Navy’s nuclear submarine programme, rising to the rank of lieutenant. He should be able to see it from home.
Source: eNCA
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