Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity CEO Chris Coleman is reflecting on former President Jimmy Carter's remarkable life of service. Carter died Sunday at the age of 100.
"He chose to leave the White House not to enrich himself but to enrich others, and he easily could have taken corporate boards and made millions and millions of dollars," Coleman explained. "But he was a very humble man. The fact that he and Rosalyn continued to live in the house that they raised their children in, that he died in that house, you know, he was not about himself. He was about serving others."
Coleman says Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter volunteered to build affordable housing with Habitat for Humanity for more than 40 years.
Their most recent visit to the Twin Cities was in 2010 when they helped build and repair 20 homes in North Minneapolis and on the East Side of St. Paul.
Coleman says Carter dedicated himself to a life of service.
"I think that he was such a, a unique light in the respect that he believed his job was to make other people's lives better, and not to make his own life better," says Coleman.
Carter is the longest-lived American president. He died Sunday, roughly 22 months after entering hospice care, at his home in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he and his wife, Rosalynn, who died at 96 in November 2023, spent most of their lives.