(CNN) Close relatives of former US President Jimmy Carter are staying by his side as he receives hospice care at his home in Georgia, a family member told CNN on Friday.
“It was his children and grandchildren there,” LeAnne Smith, a niece of Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, told CNN.
Carter, who turned 98 last year, became the oldest living US president in history after the death of George HW Bush, who died in late 2018 at the age of 94. Carter’s family announced on Saturday that the former president entered hospice care after years of declining health.
The country’s 39th president has kept a low public profile in recent years due to the coronavirus pandemic but continues to speak out about the dangers to democracy around the world, a long-standing cause of his .
Carter beat brain cancer in 2015 but faced a series of health scares in 2019, and as a result underwent surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. His health problems forced him to stop his decades-long tradition of teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.
As Carter enters the final stages of his life, Smith believes this time will bring comfort to the family around him.
“I know I talked to my dad when he had cancer and was in hospice, and it’s such an important time that you can’t appreciate enough,” Smith said.
Smith said he visited Carter’s home in Plains on Sunday to speak with his family, but the former president was on vacation at the time. Smith last saw Carter a month ago, he said, when he and Rosalynn were riding a golf cart to downtown Plains.
The Carters’ announcement of her hospice care brought a flood of media and well-wishers to her small town, which Smith said was “good for all of us in the healing process.”
He added that others “came to share and witness his legacy, I think it’s a very good thing.”
A peanut farmer and US Navy lieutenant before entering politics, Carter, a Democrat, eventually served one term as governor of Georgia and president of the United States from 1977 to 1981.
The former president is widely respected for his advocacy of human rights. His brokering of the Camp David Accords in 1978 with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin remains central to his legacy.
In his post-presidential years, Carter founded The Carter Center with his wife, Rosalynn, in hopes of promoting world peace and health. The center has been working to promote democracy by monitoring foreign elections and reducing diseases in developing countries for many years.
“After a series of short hospital stays, former US President Jimmy Carter has now decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of further intervention medically,” a statement from The Carter Center posted last week. “He has the full support of his family and his medical team.”
CNN’s Aaron Pellish, Shawna Mizelle, Betsy Klein and Denise Royal contributed to this report.
