Jimmy Carter
A Naval Academy graduate and nuclear-submarine officer who ran the family peanut business, governed Georgia, and served one term.
Biography
Carter grew up on a farm outside Plains, Georgia, without electricity until the New Deal brought it. He went to the Naval Academy during the war, served in the submarine force, and was selected by Hyman Rickover for the nuclear programme, studying reactor engineering at Union College. His father’s death in 1953 brought him home to run the family peanut warehouse.
He entered the Georgia Senate in 1963, lost a governor’s race in 1966, won one in 1970, and was almost unknown nationally when he began running for president in 1974. He beat Gerald Ford in 1976.
His term covered the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, the Panama Canal treaties, the deregulation of airlines, trucking and rail, the creation of the Departments of Energy and Education, the second oil shock and double-digit inflation, the appointment of Paul Volcker to the Federal Reserve, the Three Mile Island accident, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iran hostage crisis, which ran through the last 444 days of his presidency. He lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan and spent four decades afterwards in diplomacy and public health, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Education
- Plains High School, Georgia, Graduated (1941)
- Georgia Southwestern College (1941–1942)
- Georgia Institute of Technology (1942–1943)
- United States Naval Academy, B.S. (1946)
- Union College, Schenectady (1952–1953)
Military service
United States Navy, 1946–1953; lieutenant; surface ships, then the submarine force and the nuclear-propulsion programme under Admiral Rickover.
Offices held before the presidency
- Georgia State Senator, 1963–1967
- Governor of Georgia, 1971–1975