All About Jimmy Carter’s Humble Life Before Politics, Which Set the Stage for His Decades of Public Service

Mar. 15, 2025

Jimmy Carter.Photo:Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Former PresidentJimmy Carterdied on Sunday, Dec. 29, at the record-breaking age of 100 years old.

In 2019, at the age of 94 years and 172 days, Carter became the longest-living president in United States history, who had already enjoyed the lengthiest post-presidency life.

But Carter’s life of service didn’t begin with his 1977 inauguration. From his humble roots as a Georgia peanut farmer to his years as a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy and more, here is a look into the 39th U.S. president’s life before the White House.

He was born and raised in Plains, Georgia

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James “Jimmy” Earl Carter Jr. was born on Oct. 1, 1924, in the small, rural town of Plains, Ga., as the first child of parents James Earl Carter Sr. and Bessie Lillian Gordy Carter.

Born in Wise Sanitarium, where his mother worked as a nurse, Carter became the first American president to be born in a hospital, according toHistory.com. Aside from his mother’s nursing career, Carter’s family were primarily peanut farmers, and his father also owned a small general store in town, per theUniversity of Virginia’s Miller Center.

He was a dedicated student

Carter attended Plains High School until the 11th grade, asthe school did not have a 12th grade until 1952, according to the National Park Service.

Despite his enthusiasm, Carter was unsuccessful with his first application to the school. He spent a year at Georgia Southwestern College, then began studying math at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and finally earned his admission to the Academy in 1943, perNavyOnline.com.

Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy early on an accelerated wartime track, shortly after the end of World War II. He finished in the top 10% of his class.

He fell in love with his future wife, Rosalynn, while visiting home from the Naval Academy

Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter on their wedding day.Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP

Though they did not fall in love until many years later, Jimmy Carter first met his wife Rosalynn when he was only 3 years old, and she was less less than a day old.

Carter’s mother, a nurse, had helped deliver Rosalynn, whose family lived near the former president’s. Rosalynn would become close friends with Carter’s younger sister, Ruth.

While home from the Naval Academy the summer before his final year in Annapolis, 20-year-oldCarter ran into Rosalynn, then 17, after her first year at Georgia Southwestern College.

The former president extended an invite to Rosalynn for the pair to go see a movie together. Carter told authors Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas (who wrote the bookWhat Makes A Marriage Last) of the first date: “We rode in the rumble seat of a Ford pickup — Ruth and her boyfriend in the front — and I kissed her on that first date. I remember that vividly.”

After the date,Carter told his mother: “She’s the girl I want to marry.”

Rosalynnrejected Carter’s first proposalin 1945, as she wanted to continue focusing on her education. However, in 1946, when Carter popped the question again, Rosalynn said yes, and in July 1946,the two were marriedat the Plains Methodist Church shortly after Carter’s graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy.

He was a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy

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After Carter married Rosalynn, the pair moved down to Norfolk, Va., for Carter’s first duty station post-graduation as an ensign (the lowest commissioned officer rank in the Navy).Ensign Cartercompleted his first two years of surface ship duty on the USS Wyomingbattleship, after which he decided to apply for submarine duty. He served as an executive officer, engineering officer, and electronics repair officer on the submarine SSK-1.

In 1952, Carter became involved with Admiral Hyman G. Rickover’s (known today as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy”) nuclear-powered submarine program. He was soon promoted to lieutenant, and from November 1952 to March 1953,served on temporary duty with the Naval Reactors Branch, U.S. Atomic Energy Commissionin Washington, D.C.Afterward, while Carter was in Schenectady, N.Y.,taking classes on reactor technology and nuclear physics at Union Collegewhile gearing up to become the engineering officer for the USS Seawolf (one of the first submarines to operate on atomic power), his father, who had been sick with pancreatic cancer, died.Carter resigned from his Naval duties in 1953 to return home to Plains and take care of his family’s farm and estate.

He revived his family’s peanut farm

President Jimmy Carter’s boyhood home on Old Plains Highway (Lebanon Cemetery Road) in Plains, Georgia, 1989.

After returning to Plains, Ga., to oversee his family’s farm, which hadfallen on hard timesin his father’s final years, Carter threw himself into reviving the family business.Carter sacrificed his naval career to be in Plains. Rosalynn, who had enjoyed the steady income and travel as features of her husband’s job (she especially loved when he was stationed in Hawaii), found herself unhappy with her husband’s new pursuits.Plus, the peanut business was no overnight success. In 1954, the farm made a scant $187 in net profits, according to the Miller Center. It wasn’t until five years later, in 1959, that the peanut farm finally began to resemble something successful.

He got involved in local politics amid racial tensions in his hometown

From left to right, Jimmy Carter, the Governor of Georgia, with his wife Rosalynn Carter and retired US Army General Louis W. Truman (1908 - 2004), UK, 15th May 1973.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty

Leading his family’s peanut farm strengthened Carter’s community involvement, and would serve as the springboard for his career in politics.According to the Miller Center, Carter began serving on local boards for hospitals and libraries while living in Plains. In 1955, he won a seat on the Sumter County Board of Education and later became its chairman.

In 1962, a mere 15 days before the election, Carter saw an opportunity to spark change in Georgia. So he announced his campaign to fill an open state Senate seat.

He worked his way to Georgia governor through the state Senate

Jimmy Carter and his sister Ruth Carter Stapleton campaigning in Boston, Massachusetts in 1976.Mikki Ansin/Getty

Mikki Ansin/Getty

Carter’s 1962 Georgia state Senate campaign was hard-fought, and initially it appeared that he’d lost the election to a local businessman named Homer Moore.

But upon investigation, it became apparent that Moore’s victory was the result of blatant voter fraud, according to the Miller Center. Carter jumped on the opportunity to appeal the outcome and was successful. He served two years as a state senator before turning his eye toward a larger prize: the Georgia governor’s office.Carter had his sights set on the U.S. House of Representatives toward the end of his second term in the Georgia state Senate, hoping to challenge a political rival who held the seat, according toFox 5 Atlanta. But when that incumbent, Bo Callaway, decided to run for governor instead, it unnerved Carter, who didn’t want to see Callaway take the reins of the state’s government.

Though Carter believed he could easily win the vacant House seat, he decided to challenge Callaway for governor in an attempt to keep him from power.Carter ultimately lost the 1966 gubernatorial race, but he was undeterred. In 1970, he campaigned for governor again, taking a less liberal approach and appealing to the demographic of voters who had rejected him in 1966.

He defeated incumbent Gerald Ford to become the 39th U.S. president

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Though his lack of recognition initially posed a challenge during his campaign, it ultimately became the driving force that propelled him to success as a candidate.

In the wake of the infamous Watergate scandal during President Nixon’s administration and in the years after the Vietnam War, the country was hungry for something new and far removed from the White House and Washington.

Gerald Ford, the incumbent who had offered Nixon a full pardon in the wake of the Watergate scandal, was exactly the opposite. Hispardoning of Nixondiscouraged voter’s confidence in him. Carter, a relative unknown in the world of politicians, was just what citizens were looking for to clean up Washington’s act.

Carterultimately won the presidential election on a campaign that allowed him victories in many of the early primaries, appealing to both Southern voters (which he ultimately won) and Northerners in his running mate Walter Mondale.

source: people.com