At Hospice and Happy, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter mark 77th wedding anniversary

Plains Georgia 1.02am / London 6.02am

Former President U.S. James Earl “Jimmy” Carter and former first lady Eleanor Rosalynn Carter are celebrating their 77th wedding anniversary on Friday, continuing their reign as longest-married presidential couple. Hopefully both even reach 200 years or longer, with happy. Get well soon for Mr and Mrs Carter (Dementia).

While the pair wed in 1946 while Mrs. Carter was in college and Mr. Carter was home from the U.S. Naval Academy, their love story started about a year prior, when Mr. Carter's younger sister set him up with Eleanor Rosalynn Smith, a family friend. After their first date, Mr. Carter came home and told his mother, "She's the girl I want to marry."

The Carters moved often when Mr. Carter was in the Navy and their children were all born in different states: John William in Virginia, James Earl III in Hawaii, Donnel Jeffrey in Connecticut and Amy Lynn in Georgia, where the family is originally from and returned after Mr. Carter's service. 

The White House itself once harvested the power of the sun. On June 20, 1979, the Carter administration installed 32 panels designed to harvest the sun's rays and use them to heat water.

Here is what Carter predicted at the dedication ceremony: "In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people."

For some of the solar panels it is the former that has come to pass: one resides at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, one at the Carter Library and, as of this week, one will join the collection of the Solar Science and Technology Museum in Dezhou, China. Huang Ming, chairman of Himin Solar Energy Group Co., the largest manufacturer of such solar hot water heaters in the world, accepted the donation for permanent display there on August 5. After all, companies like his in China now produce some 80 percent of the solar water heaters used in the world today.

But they are based on the same technology developed here in the U.S. and once manufactured in Warrentown, Va., by InterTechnology/Solar Corp., the company behind the Carter panels.* Roughly three meters long, one meter wide and just 10 centimeters deep, the blue-black panels absorb sunlight to heat water piped through their innards. The Carter administration set a goal of deriving 20 percent of U.S. energy needs from such renewable sources by the turn of the century. Today, the U.S. gets a mere 7 percent of its energy from renewables, the bulk of that from the massive hydroelectric dams constructed in the middle of the 20th century. Solar thermal and photovoltaic technology combined provide less than 0.1 percent.

By 1986, the Reagan administration had gutted the research and development budgets for renewable energy at the then-fledgling U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and eliminated tax breaks for the deployment of wind turbines and solar technologies—recommitting the nation to reliance on cheap but polluting fossil fuels, often from foreign suppliers. "The Department of Energy has a multibillion-dollar budget, in excess of $10 billion," Reagan said during an election debate with Carter, justifying his opposition to the latter's energy policies. "It hasn't produced a quart of oil or a lump of coal or anything else in the line of energy."

And in 1986 the Reagan administration quietly dismantled the White House solar panel installation while resurfacing the roof. "Hey! That system is working. Why don't you keep it?" recalls mechanical engineer Fred Morse, now of Abengoa Solar, who helped install the original solar panels as director of the solar energy program during the Carter years and then watched as they were dismantled during his tenure in the same job under Reagan. "Hey! This whole [renewable] R&D program is working, why don't you keep it?"

After they came down it took a soft-spoken administrator from a small environmental college in Maine to rescue the Carter panels from being a forgotten curiosity stored in the dark corner of a vast government warehouse.

Back in Plains, Georgia, the pair ran Carter's Warehouse, a seed and farm supply company, in Plains and the farm he inherited. 

When Mr. Carter ran for the Georgia Senate in 1962, Mrs. Carter was a member of his campaign team. She continued to help him get elected governor of Georgia in 1970 and later president.

Mr. Carter once said his wife is "much more political."

I love campaigning. I had the best time. I was in all the states in the United States. I campaigned solid every day the last time we ran."

The couple is known for their strong bond and working together not just during his political career, but afterward as they helped build up Habitat for Humanity, an organization that builds affordable housing, and run the Carter Center, which is committed to human rights "and the alleviation of human suffering."

Earlier this year, the family announced Mrs. Carter had been diagnosed with dementia. Previously, it was announced Mr. Carter would receive hospice care at home after a few trips to the hospital in recent years.

In 2019, he became the oldest living former president in U.S. history, at 94 years and 172 days old.

Mr. Carter, 98, and Mrs. Carter, 95, also hold the record for the longest presidential marriage. President George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara Bush come in second, with a marriage that lasted 73 years, 101 days until her death in 2018. Mr. Bush died months later.

Bess Truman, the wife of former President Harry Truman died at age 97 and is only former first lady who has lived longer than Mrs. Carter.

When Mr. Carter was inaugurated president in 1977, he and Mrs. Carter had been married for 30 years, 197 days, putting them in 10th place for longest marriage at inauguration.

The pair is marking their 77th anniversary with a quiet Friday at home in Plains, Georgia.

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