Phil Ammann
Bill Day’s latest honors former President Jimmy Carter, who turns 91 in October.
Carter announced this week that recent elective liver surgery to remove a small mass has revealed cancer that has spread to other parts of his body.
After leaving the White House in 1981, Carter has had the longest post-presidency career in history, one that has made him one of the most active and respected public figures in America.
There are few things Jimmy Carter has not accomplished since leaving Washington D.C.
Author of 28 books, Carter has raised “retirement” to an art form.
In addition to regularly teaching Sunday school at a Baptist church in Plains, Ga., he continued as a faculty member at Emory University and led the annual weekly Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project for Habitat for Humanity International.
As president of the United States, Carter was committed to social justice and basic human rights; he continued that calling an international human rights mediator in Haiti, Panama and other countries. In 2010, Carter had secured the release of an American held captive in North Korea.
In discussions with the New York Times, Carter’s aides and advisers said they expect the former president to face his diagnosis with the same determination as he brought to the presidency, as well as his life afterwards.
“He’s had a history of helping people eradicate diseases all over the world,” Carter’s former communications director Gerald Rafshoon told the Times. “This is just another obstacle.”
As Day illustrates, the world is heartbroken as cancer touches a great man who embraced the entire planet like no other.
