Former President Jimmy Carter Is No Longer Awake Every Day Amid Hospice Care

Jimmy Carter's family is sharing an update. 

Almost a year and a half after the former President entered hospice care, his grandson Jason Carter spoke to how the 99-year-old is faring these days. 

As he told Southern Living June 7, there has "really been no change" in his grandfather's condition, noting Jimmy isn't awake every day, though he still gets frequent visits from family members his including children John William "Jack" Carter, James Earl "Chip" Carter III, Donnel Jeffrey "Jeff" Carter and Amy Carter.

Jason added that following the death of the former President's wife Rosalynn Carter in November, Jimmy is "experiencing the world as best he can as he continues through this process."

"After 77 years of marriage… I just think none of us really understand what it's like for him right now," Jason reflected. "We have to embrace that fact, that there's things about the spirit that you just can't understand." 

Jason also detailed a recent visit he made to Plains, Georgia, the 600-person hometown of the former President and First Lady, and where his grandfather is currently in hospice care.

"I told him, I said, ‘Pawpaw, you know, when people ask me how you're doing I say, ‘honestly I don't know,'" Jason remembered. "And he kind of smiled and he said, ‘I don't know, myself.'" 

Of the visit—during which he and Jimmy also watched a Braves game and talked about the family's nonprofit organization, The Carter Center—he added, "It was pretty sweet."

Jason—who is currently the Chair of the Carter Center's Board of Trustees—also expressed the significance of the Georgia town to his family's history. 

"[Plains] is the place that has given him the greatest support and it is the only place where he would go through this part of his life," he explained. "That's his home in every way, and he really cherished that time and that support."

Jason continued, "I think the fact that he and my grandmother both came from that small town—it is a fundamental part of who he is and who he has been for his whole life. There is no other place in the world that he would be at peace other than Plains." 

It is also where his grandmother was laid to rest when she passed away in November at 96, of which Jason fondly remembers the way the entire town came out to bear witness to Rosalynn's procession from the church to her final resting place. 

"That was the part that we'll remember the most," he noted. "Because the connection to that town and to that small community in rural Georgia, really is the most important thing in their lives."

And for more on President Carter and Rosalynn's enduring romance, keep reading.

A photo from Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter's earliest days together as a young naval officer and his bride stands out at the Plains High School Jimmy Carter National Historical Park in their Georgia hometown.

The Carters could share a private moment anywhere, even in front of thousands of people at the Democratic National Convention in 1976.

Along with his mother, Jimmy and Rosalynn were joined at the DNC here by daughter Amy Lynn Carter, their eldest son, John William "Jack" Carter, and third son Donnel Jeffrey "Jeff" Carter with his wife Annette Davis.

The couple, watching the returns with family in Atlanta, embraced on Election Night in 1976 upon finding out that Carter was going to be the 39th president of the United States.

The president and first lady put their best feet forward at a series of inaugural balls following Jimmy's swearing-in on Jan. 20, 1977. Rosalynn raised some eyebrows by recycling the same Mary Matise for Jimmae gown she wore to her husband's 1971 gubernatorial inauguration balls, but she had her husband's full support, Jimmy writing in A Full Life that he was "very proud of her beauty and grace."

Daughter Amy Lynn Carter was 9 when she and her Siamese cat Misty Malarky Ying Yang and dog Grits moved into the White House in January 1977.

Jimmy was the first sitting president since Theodore Roosevelt (and no president has done it since) to send his child to public school, enrolling Amy at Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School in Washington, D.C.

But if there had been an Internet, this would have been a meme: During his one debate with Republican challenger Ronald Reagan in October 1980, President Carter invoked his then-13-year-old when he said, "I had a discussion the other day with my daughter Amy before I came here to ask me what the important issue was. She said she thought nuclear weaponry and the control of nuclear arms."

Let's just say, the other side had a little fun with that, with Reagan supporters in Milwaukee chanting "Amy! Amy!" two days later when the candidate delivered a speech. "I remember when Patti and Ron were tiny kids," the future 36th president quipped. "We used to talk about nuclear power."

"Ask Amy" bumper stickers became a quick moneymaker for Republican groups, and she even made The Tonight Show, host Johnny Carson joking, "This will be a significant monologue because I asked Amy Carter what she thought were the most important issues to make jokes about."

The Carters may have had a young daughter but they also had three daughters-in-law by the time Jimmy became president, and most of the family moved to Washington. 

Jack and wife Juliette "Judy" Langford stayed in Georgia, where they had welcomed son Jason James Carter on Aug. 7, 1975, and where daughter Sarah Rosemary would be born Dec. 19, 1978. (After their divorce, Jack married mother of two Elizabeth Brasfield on May 15, 1992.)

The Carters' second son, James Earl "Chip" Carter III, worked for the Democratic National Committee in Washington while his dad was in office and moved into the White House with wife Caron Griffin, who was eight months pregnant on Inauguration Day. Still, she strolled along the parade route with the rest of the family for a few blocks when the president and first lady made the unprecedented move to walk the whole mile and a half from the Capitol to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

"People along the parade route, when they saw that we were walking, began to cheer and weep," Jimmy later wrote, "and it was an emotional experience for us as well."

Chip and Caron's son, James Earl Carter IV, was born Feb. 25, 1977. That August it was announced that Chip was returning to Plains but his wife and child would be staying with the first family, and he and Caron confirmed their separation in 1978. Chip later married Ginger Hodges, with whom he welcomed daughter Margaret Alicia Carter on Sept. 23, 1987.

Chip's been married to third wife Becky Payne since 2001.

The Carters' third son, Jeff, married his college sweetheart Annette Davis on April 6, 1975, and they moved into the White House, too, while he was attending George Washington University.

Jeff and Annette eventually had three sons, Joshua Jeffrey (b. 1984), Jeremy Davis (1987-2015) and James Carlton (b. 1991), and were together until her death on Sept. 19, 2021.

Rosalynn was her husband's number-one confidante when he was president—and forever after.

"It's a full partnership," Carter told the AP in 2021 of his then-75-year marriage.

Jimmy and Rosalyn remain in sync at the White House in January 1979.

Amy, here with her dad in 1995, is mom to son Hugo, born in 1999, with first husband James Gregory Wentzel, and son Errol Carter Kelly with her spouse since 2007, John Joseph "Jay" Kelly.

The house Jimmy and Rosalynn built in 1961 and have lived in ever since remained the gathering spot for the whole family.

The Carters are also great-grandparents to Jason's sons, Henry and Thomas, with his wife Kate; Sarah's daughter, Josephine, with husband Brendan Keith Murphy; Margaret's daughter, Alicia, with husband Harold Edward Carter; Joshua's sons, Charles and Jonathan, with wife Sarah; and James' daughter, Rayna Rose, with wife Anna.

It's no wonder they earned the nickname "first lovebirds."

Jimmy knew a thing or two about keeping the peace.

"Every day there needs to be reconciliation and communication between the two spouses," the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize told the AP. "We don't go to sleep with some remaining differences between us." 

"Jimmy and I are always looking for things to do together," Rosalynn said, but "each [spouse] should have some space. That's really important."

"It's hard to live until you're 95 years old," Carter told People in 2019. "I think the best explanation for that is to marry the best spouse: someone who will take care of you and engage and do things to challenge you and keep you alive and interested in life."

"One of the things Jesus taught was: If you have any talents, try to utilize them for the benefit of others," Jimmy told People in 2019, discussing the nearly four decades he and his wife had spent volunteering and advocating for Habitat for Humanity. "That's what Rosa and I have both tried to do."

Though their physical involvement in construction grew more limited with time, the Carters became synonymous with the organization, which builds affordable housing and offers no-interest mortgages to buyers who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford a home.

"I think both mine and Rosa's minds are almost as good as they used to be, we just have limited capability on stamina and strength," Jimmy said. "But we still try to stay busy and do a good job at what we do."

They got so adept at wielding tools over the years, they knocked down their own bedroom wall during a later-in-life home renovation in Plains.

"By that time," Rosalynn told the Washington Post in 2018, "we had worked with Habitat so much that it was just second-nature."