Today is Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s 70th wedding anniversary. Jimmy Carter has been battling cancer, so he thought he would never reach this impressive milestone. In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he said:
“There was one period of a few days that I thought I only had a couple weeks left of life.”
“We thought life was over for me. I think that having been together for 69 years obviously made it easier for us to weather that storm of emotions.”
His cancer has been in remission since March.
This summer is also the 70th anniversary of Jimmy Carter’s graduation from the United States Naval Academy, which was June 5, 1946. He came home and married Rosalynn one month later. Formally Eleanor Rosalynn Smith, the two met through Jimmy’s sister, Ruth, when she visited him at Annapolis a few months earlier.
She turned him down the first time he proposed.
In an interview with Oprah, Jimmy said:
“She was the right person. That’s the first thing. And then, we decided fairly early in our life to give each other plenty of space. Rosalynn has her own ideas, her own ambitions, her own goals in life, which, in some ways, are different from mine. I let her do her thing; she lets me do my thing. And we try to resolve our inevitable and fairly frequent differences before we go to bed at night.”
Jimmy Carter began his political career when he was elected Governor of Georgia. He became the president of the United States in 1977, and remained president until 1981. Carter was one of ten Democratic candidates running in 1976. He won by double digits in the election. When Carter had to deal with the Iranian hostage crisis, however, he got crushed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.
It’s rumored that Reagan and his staff manipulated the Iranians into not releasing the hostages, making Carter look weak when in reality, Carter did all of the work, while Reagan took the credit.
Carter has done some great humanitarian work since leaving the office. He has done a lot of work for Habitat for Humanity. When he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, he said:
“The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes – and we must.”
He may not have been the best President, but he has done a lot of great work since. This anniversary is a great milestone for him.
Here is his interview from Oprah’s show last year:
Featured Image From The Carter Center Via Facebook.
