We Mourn, We Celebrate, We Carry On

By Paige Alexander
CEO, The Carter Center

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Along with you, we are grieving the loss of the Carter Center’s great co-founder and my friend, former President Jimmy Carter. Thousands of you have reached out to offer your heartfelt praise for his life and condolences for his passing, and I want to personally thank you for those comforting messages.

Certainly, this is a solemn occasion, an occasion for tears and mourning. Those feelings are entirely justified and legitimate.

At the same time, this feels like a moment for joy and hope as we reflect on such a rich, well-lived life.

Last fall, we threw a big party in Atlanta to mark President Carter’s 100th birthday, and everything we said and felt and celebrated at that time remains just as true and valid right now. His is a life worth celebrating.

It seems almost absurdly simplistic to say we have lost a great man. The English language gives us many words to choose from, but none of them truly succeed at describing who and what Jimmy Carter was.

Yes, he was the powerful president of the United States. Yes, he was the co-founder and leader, with his beloved wife, Rosalynn, of The Carter Center, which does so much good in the world every single day – which YOU help us do every single day.

Yes, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for the Camp David Accords and the Guinea Worm Cease-fire and a thousand other amazing acts of courage and kindness and diplomacy.

Yes, he was a Renaissance man who could grow peanuts and write poems and build furniture and paint birds.

But – incredibly – he was even more than that.

To his family, he was an adoring husband, a loving father and grandfather, a tender great-grandfather.

To many of us, he wasn’t just a boss; he was a mentor and a friend. And I encourage each of you to celebrate that.

To a great number of us, maybe all of us, Jimmy Carter was a hero. Heroes are, by definition, rare: They do things that no one else can do – or at least that no one can do alone.

But that’s the beauty of it: We don’t have to do it alone.

President Carter’s legacy and vision are far too big for any one person to carry. But together, we can lift that legacy and vision up onto our shoulders and carry them forward into a future brimming with promise – a future where people all over the world get to vote in free and fair elections, a world where human rights are respected and enjoyed, a world where there is no such thing as Guinea worm disease. A world where women are free and people can see.

What that will take is not one more Jimmy Carter – which is good, because there never will be another Jimmy Carter. No, what it will take is legions of good and great and ordinary people who strive to emulate Jimmy Carter.

He lived a hundred years and did all the things he did to show us what’s possible. Now it’s up to us to keep pushing forward, to keep doing the work and making his vision real.

That is how we truly honor him.