Former President Jimmy Carter, who entered hospice care more than a year ago, passed away on December 29, 2024 at the age of 100. The Democrat from Georgia served just one term in the White House (1976-80) but had a long and impactful life after leaving office. He also had noteworthy connections to San Diego.
Carter had told family he was staying alive long enough to vote for Kamala Harris for President. Harris lost to Donald Trump in the November General Election.
Post-presidency, Carter wrote numerous books, continued to comment on global affairs, created The Carter Center (winning a Pulitzer Prize for promoting human rights), and was a leading figure in Habitat for Humanity, the organization that builds nonprofit housing.
Some historians have called Carter the greatest ex-President of all time.
Locally, on April 8, 2004, Carter threw out the first pitch to open Petco Park in downtown San Diego. The connection: The former President was a friend and ally in charitable causes with former Padres owner John Moores.
When Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, stepped down as chair and vice-chair of the Carter Center’s board of trustees, Moores assumed the chairmanship.
“I accept this honor with a keen understanding of and devotion to the center’s mission to wage peace, fight disease and build hope for the most needy citizens of our world,” Moores said at the time.
Carter was an avid baseball fan who attended numerous Atlanta Braves games. During a 1996 Braves-Padres game in San Diego (at former Jack Murphy Stadium), Carter, who was then 71, made a one-handed catch of a Ken Caminiti foul ball while sitting in the stands near the Padres dugout.
The Moores-Carter connection led to Carter getting his name on a presidential suite at a downtown San Diego luxury hotel. The Omni San Diego opened the same year (2004) as Petco Park. Moores’ real estate investment company was a partner in the development of the Omni, which is connected to the ballpark by a skybridge.
The President Jimmy Carter Suite is on the 21st floor. The 2,200-square-foot suite includes an elegant living room area, floor-to-ceiling windows, full kitchenette, wet bar and two private balconies where guests can hear the roar of fans at Petco Park.
Another edifice with ties to Carter’s life and legacy was built recently in San Diego’s Little Italy.
The 2,000-square-foot Piazza Costanza, near the corner of Columbia and West Ash streets (in front of Luma Apartments), was dedicated on November 28, 2023.
In 1978, Midge Costanza, a local political activist, was the first woman to hold the title of assistant to the President of the United States, in Carter’s administration.
Friend and political ally Laurie Black was in a Scripps Mercy Hospital patient room with Costanza in her dying days in early 2010. Black was chief of staff for San Diego Congresswoman Lynn Schenk in the early 1990s and hired Costanza to work in Schenk’s office.
“Jimmy Carter called Midge in the hospital before she died,” Black recalls. “She was on a respirator and pretty out of it. But when she heard his voice on the phone we saw her smile and open her eyes. She knew it was him.” SDSun
