James Earl (Jimmy) Carter Jr., Mercer University Life Trustee, Nobel laureate and the 39th president of the United States, died earlier today. He was 100.
Initially elected in 2012 to the Mercer Board of Trustees — the only board he served on after leaving the White House — President Carter was elected a Life Trustee in 2017.
“President Carter, as with every endeavor he pursued, was an active, engaged trustee,” Mercer President William D. Underwood said. “Until his health began to decline in 2019, he never missed a board meeting. He asked tough questions, offered keen insights, and took every opportunity to advance Mercer and its mission. He offered wise counsel to me and was a good friend. His death leaves a significant void in the Mercer family. With profound gratitude for the life he lived, we offer our prayers to the Carter family for peace and comfort in this time of loss.”
President Carter’s support of Mercer spans half a century, dating to his tenure as the 76th governor of Georgia, when in the mid-1970s he authorized the initial state funding that led to establishment of the Mercer University School of Medicine, which opened in 1982. During his tenure on the Mercer board, he was a strong advocate for the School of Medicine’s mission to prepare primary care physicians for rural and other underserved areas of Georgia. As a trustee, President Carter made the motion to build a four-year campus of the School of Medicine in Columbus to provide more physicians for the state. It opened in 2022.
In 2018, President Carter called President Underwood and asked for his help in recruiting a physician to Plains, which had recently lost its only doctor. A couple of weeks passed, and President Carter followed up with an e-mail that simply read, “Bill, where’s our doctor?” That led to the School of Medicine opening its first rural clinic in Plains, staffed with a physician and nurse, within weeks of President Carter’s request. Mercer Medicine now has six rural clinics across Georgia and more locations under consideration.
President Carter was also a strong proponent of Mercer’s international service and research initiative, Mercer On Mission, which has deployed hundreds of Mercer students and faculty to dozens of countries around the world to improve the human condition.
“As a trustee of the University, I know that Mercer On Mission programs inspire and empower students to continue to think of ways to put others before self,” he once said in an interview. It was a principle he modeled.
In 2008, President Carter and President Underwood served as co-chairs of The New Baptist Covenant, which involved leaders of more than 30 Baptist organizations claiming over 20 million members throughout the United States and Canada. It culminated with a celebration that drew 20,000 diverse Baptists to the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. The work continues today, bridging divisions and seeking ways of cooperative engagement among a wide spectrum of Baptists in North America.
In 2016, President Carter spoke at Macon Commencement and assisted in the conferring of an honorary doctorate on musician Gregg Allman. The subject of a documentary titled Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President, he told the audience that he likely wouldn’t have been elected without the help of the Allman Brothers Band and Capricorn Records co-founder and Mercer graduate Phil Walden, who helped raise money for his campaign when it was running low on cash.
At a board meeting three years earlier, President Carter advocated for the awarding of an honorary degree to Macon-native Richard “Little Richard” Penniman.
Two of the more than two dozen books authored by President Carter were published by Mercer University Press.
