Mourners honored former President Jimmy Carter’s humble roots while paying their respects after his death at age 100 on Sunday, Dec. 29.
Photographers captured a makeshift tribute to the 39th president of the United States outside of the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, Georgia, in the hours after Carter’s death was announced.
Among the traditional flower bouquets, well wishers also placed peanut containers, peanut butter and peaches around the Carter Center sign, NPR’s Stephen Fowler reported.
By the evening, a chalkboard sign reading “We love you President Carter” was also added, as seen in a Getty image.
The peaches, are, of course, a nod to Georgia’s most iconic export. The peanuts and peanut butter honor Carter’s personal and family history.
Diana Walker/Getty
Carter was born into a family of primarily peanut farmers. Much of his youth was spent working on the Plains peanut farm that his family had cultivated, and Carter used the money he earned to jumpstart his career.
Later, he oversaw the farm, himself, after it had fallen on hard times before Carter’s father’s death, according to the Miller Center of Public Affairs. It was not smooth sailing — in fact, it took him many years to turn a decent net profit.
Carter, of course, attended the Naval Academy and worked as an engineer before moving into politics, eventually becoming Georgia’s governor before his one term as commander in chief.
He was the longest-lived president in United States history — a title he held since March of 2019, and a record he broke with each birthday thereafter.
Carter was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Rosalynn Carter, who died in Nov. 2023, at 96. Alongside Rosalynn, the former president founded the Carter Center in 1982 as a humanitarian, nongovernmental and nonprofit organization.
