Originally published 2019-09-20.
In May 2019 Jimmy Carter, then 94, broke his hip and needed surgery. A few months later he was back on a Habitat for Humanity building site. In October 2019, now 95, he joined the annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project in Nashville, Tennessee, where volunteers worked on 21 homes that week. He arrived on site the morning after another fall at home had left him with 14 stitches and a black eye.
The story became one of the defining images of Carter's long post-presidency: a former president in a hard hat, bruised but working. Here is what happened in 2019, how the Carters' Habitat partnership began, and why it mattered.
A hip fracture, then a return
Carter broke his hip at his home in Plains, Georgia, in May 2019 and had hip replacement surgery. Doctors told him to rest, and he paused the Sunday school classes he had taught for decades at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains. Within weeks he was back in front of the congregation, to the delight of the visitors who regularly travelled to hear him.
In the summer the Carter Center confirmed that he and Rosalynn still planned to take part in that autumn's Habitat build in Nashville. A Habitat spokesman responded to doubts with a short line that summed up Carter's reputation: he always comes back.
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At the time Carter had just become the longest-lived president in US history. In March 2019 he passed the age reached by George H. W. Bush, who had died the previous November at 94.
The 2019 Nashville build
The 36th Carter Work Project opened on Sunday 6 October 2019 with a ceremony at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. Earlier that day Carter had fallen at home in Georgia and needed 14 stitches above his eye. He went to the ceremony anyway.
The next morning, according to the Associated Press, he walked slowly across the muddy site with a cane, led a devotion for several hundred volunteers and told jokes. He and Rosalynn then spent the day building corbels, the support brackets used under porch roofs, for one of the 21 houses rising in the Park Preserve neighbourhood. Country singers Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, longtime Habitat volunteers, worked alongside them, as did Tennessee's governor, Bill Lee, and his wife, Maria.
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Habitat homes are not handouts. Future homeowners put in hundreds of hours of "sweat equity", helping to build their own houses and their neighbours', and then buy the homes with affordable mortgages. The Nashville week also helped fund more homes in the same neighbourhood over the following two years.
How the Carters' Habitat partnership began
Habitat for Humanity was founded in 1976 in Americus, Georgia, about ten miles from Plains. The Carters first volunteered with the organisation in March 1984, and that autumn they led a group to renovate a run-down building in New York City. The trip became an annual event, later named the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project.
Over more than 35 years the couple worked alongside over 100,000 volunteers to build, renovate or repair more than 4,400 homes in 14 countries, according to Habitat's figures. Builds took them across the United States and to places including Mexico, South Africa, the Philippines, Haiti, India, Thailand and Vietnam. In 2018, the year before Nashville, the project was held in Mishawaka, Indiana.
The Carters did not just appear for photographs. Volunteers and journalists who worked with them described a president who measured, sawed and hammered all day, and who expected others to do the same.
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Surviving cancer in 2015
The Nashville build came four years after a far more serious health scare. In August 2015 Carter announced that melanoma had spread to his liver and brain, where doctors had found four small spots. He spoke about it calmly at a press conference, saying he was at ease with whatever came.
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He was treated with surgery, radiation and a then-new immunotherapy drug, pembrolizumab. In December 2015 he told his Sunday school class that his latest scans showed no sign of cancer. His recovery helped draw public attention to immunotherapy, which has changed the outlook for some patients with advanced melanoma. Results vary widely from person to person, and anyone facing a similar diagnosis should discuss options with their doctor.
President, peacemaker and volunteer
Carter, a Democrat, served as Georgia state senator and then governor before becoming the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. After losing the 1980 election, he and Rosalynn founded the Carter Center in Atlanta in 1982. It monitored elections, mediated conflicts and led a long campaign that pushed Guinea worm disease to the edge of eradication.
He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for decades of work to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, advance democracy and human rights, and promote economic and social development. Many historians judge his post-presidency more favourably than his single term in office.
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His remarks on war and China
In April 2019, a month before his hip injury, Carter told his Sunday school class that President Donald Trump had phoned him the day before, worried that China was getting ahead of the United States. Carter said he did not share that fear, but he offered an explanation. He argued that the US had spent around $3 trillion on wars, money that could have gone into infrastructure, while China had not been at war with anyone since 1979.
"China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that's why they're ahead of us," Carter said, as reported by Newsweek. He added that he was not comparing his country unfavourably to China. His $3 trillion figure was an estimate; studies of the cost of US wars since 2001 have put the total much higher once veterans' care and interest are included.
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Later years
Carter kept volunteering for as long as his health allowed. Later in October 2019 he fell again and fractured his pelvis, and he stepped back from building in the years that followed. In February 2023 the Carter Center announced that he had entered home hospice care in Plains. Rosalynn Carter died in November 2023 after 77 years of marriage. Jimmy Carter died on 29 December 2024 at the age of 100, the longest-lived president in American history.
The work continues without them. Habitat has kept the Carter Work Project going, with builds in Austin, Texas, in 2025 and in Atlanta in 2026. The lesson Carter left is a practical one: you do not need to be young, rich or powerful to help someone get a safe, decent home. You need to show up, and keep showing up.
Sources: AP via KATV, 7 October 2019: Despite fall, former President Carter helps build home; Habitat for Humanity: Carter Work Project; Newsweek, 15 April 2019; Wikipedia: Jimmy Carter; Wikipedia: Post-presidency of Jimmy Carter. Photos: Chris Graythen/Getty Images; Alex Wong/Getty Images; Instagram posts by @2unesgrl, @cnnpolitics, @habitatorlandoosceola and @ryanscarola.
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