This year’s White House Christmas ornament honors Navy veteran and former President Jimmy Carter.
Carter, 100, is the first American president to be honored with the ornament while still living.
The nonprofit White House Historical Association began issuing the annual series in 1981, the same year Carter left office. The ornament series features a different president every year in order of their time in office.
The ornament is shaped like an anchor to honor Carter’s service in the Navy and includes a submarine. According to Naval History and Heritage Command, following his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, he served aboard the USS Wyoming as an ensign. He then completed two years of surface ship duty before applying and being accepted for submarine duty. Carter served as executive officer, engineering officer and electronics officer on the SSK-1.
Carter was selected by then-Capt. Hyman G. Rickover to participate in a program to create nuclear-powered submarines. From 1952 to 1953, Carter served on temporary duty with the Naval Reactors Branch, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
He was set to become the engineering officer for USS Seawolf, one of the first nuclear-powered submarines, when his father died in July of 1953.
That led Carter to return to his hometown of Plains, Georgia, where he managed his family’s peanut farming interests and pursued a career in politics.
When he was elected president in 1976, Carter became the fifth president with prior Navy service.
An image of the USS Jimmy Carter, the last of the Navy’s Seawolf-class submarines, can be found on the rear of the ornament. Carter is also the only president to have a nuclear submarine named after him.
A view of the north side of the White House can be found on the front of the ornament. It features doves in a nod to Carter’s peacemaking efforts during his presidency.
A globe on the back of the ornament pays homage to both Carter’s environmental commitment and his efforts as a private citizen to secure world peace. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Peanuts and their blossoms can be found along the bottom of the ornament, in honor of Carter’s time as a peanut farmer and businessman in Plains.
Carter is currently in hospice care at his home. He is the oldest living former president. He and his wife Rosalynn were married for more than 77 years, the longest marriage in U.S. presidential history, until her death in Nov. 2023.
The White House Historical Association was created in 1961 by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy to help preserve the interior of the White House and educate the public.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.