The Postal Service will release a stamp this year to honor former President Jimmy Carter, who died last December.
The stamp will be available beginning Oct. 1, the 101st anniversary of Carter’s birth.
“The stamp program celebrates the best in American culture, places and people, and it is difficult to consider a more fitting honoree than former President Jimmy Carter,” said Peter Pastre, the Postal Service’s government relations and public policy vice president, who announced the stamp and revealed its artwork Aug. 16 at an event in Carter’s hometown of Plains, GA.
“In his support and leadership of his beloved community, state and nation, he lent his quiet, thoughtful and deliberate energy around causes he believed in, and most certainly in his conduct and accomplishments as a former president, Jimmy Carter truly personified the best in America,” Pastre said.
Representatives of the Carter family, the Friends of Jimmy Carter and the National Park Service joined Pastre at the event, held at the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park.
“The Carter family and the Friends of Jimmy Carter are honored to be able to take part in revealing the design for President Carter’s Forever stamp. Together we’ve had the distinct privilege of a front row seat to his life and legacy, and today’s reveal gives the world an opportunity to share his legacy with others on a daily basis,” said Kim Carter Fuller, executive director of the Friends of Jimmy Carter.
Carter came to the White House as an outsider who represented a new generation of progressive Southern politicians.
The day after his inauguration as the 39th president on Jan. 20, 1977, Carter issued a controversial executive order that pardoned those who had illegally evaded the military draft during the Vietnam War.
In the four years that followed, he would make humility, reconciliation and frugality recurring themes in his presidency.
Carter’s progressivism was most evident in his appointments of many women and minorities to government positions. He created a presidential commission on mental health, established new cabinet departments and greatly increased the size of the National Park System and federally designated wilderness areas.
A fiscal conservative, he tried to balance the federal budget and control inflation. In his efforts to improve the economy, he presided over deregulation in several industries, including energy and air travel.
On the world stage, Carter was praised for personally negotiating the Camp David Accords, providing a framework for peace in the Middle East. He signed SALT II, a treaty with the Soviet Union to limit strategic nuclear arms, and he initiated a major change in foreign policy when he announced that the United States would officially recognize and establish formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.
After a presidency that concluded on a note of diplomatic and economic turmoil, Carter became a prominent activist for peace, human rights and social and economic progress around the world.
In 1982, he partnered with Emory University to establish the Carter Center, which advances democracy, monitors elections, mediates disputes and works to prevent tropical diseases in the world’s poorest nations. In recognition of his efforts, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 — long after many had praised him as America’s greatest ex-president.
He was 100 when he died.
The Forever stamp will feature a 1982 oil-on-linen painting created as a life study by artist Herbert E. Abrams in preparation for painting his official White House portrait of Carter. Ethel Kessler, an art director for USPS, designed the stamp.
The stamp will be available at Post Offices and on usps.com.
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