Transcript of Remembering Jimmy Carter, a look at the life of the 39th US President

Remembering Jimmy Carter, a President who perhaps more than any other, exemplified the American dream, born to a humble farming family in rural Georgia, elected to the world's most powerful office, but never losing his drive to help those less fortunate.

I'm perfectly with my lifespan being in the hands of God. I don't think anybody could have had a more gratifying life. My family, Carter, have lived in Georgia since about 1760. We've all been farmers. My generation, on my daddy's side, I'm the first one that ever finished high school. My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for the President.

Without question, Jimmy Carter defied the odds in so many different ways.

My grandfather is a small town guy. I think it's fundamentally true of him that he comes from a 600-person town. He didn't have shoes until he went to school. He grew up with the land on the farm. James Carl Carter, senior, is a farmer. He grows peanuts and cotton. Jimmy Carter, as a boy, sells boiled peanuts on the main street of Plains, Georgia.

When I was eight years old, if you'd ask me, What do you What do you want to do when you grow up? Like a parrot, I would say, I want to go to an office and be a naval officer.

When he graduates from the Naval Academy, he marries the girl next door, Rosalind Smith, and she becomes Rosalind Carter.

He actually was primed to be an in the Navy. He was on track to be in something really big. But when my granddaddy passed away, he came home. He decided to come back to planes and run his father's peanut business.

Carter gives up this glamorous naval career, much to his wife's chagrin, in order to become the humble peanut farmer that his father had been.

But he gets really interested in politics, and his next step is running for the Georgia Senate. When he ran for governor of Georgia, many people thought he stood no chance. Even his wife questioned, Do we really want to run for governor? And he did.

I think when you heard Jimmy Carter, the governor, say in his inaugural address, I say to you, quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over. He put Martin Luther King's picture up in the state capital.

But he thought he could do more. So he ran for president.

My name is Jimmy Carter. I'm from Georgia. I hope to be your next President. How are you doing?

When it comes to presidential timing, Jimmy Carter, his timing was perfect. America was still exhausted from the Nixon years. Here comes Honest Abe, Jimmy Carter, the man who promised never to lie.

By 272 electoral votes, two more than he needed, Jimmy Carter projected as the next President of the United States.

People who remember the night that he won remember that image of him in this little town, in this remote place in the South.

I told you I didn't intend to lose.

With that huge thousand-watt smile.

Jimmy Carter, less than 24 hours away from the presidency, still carrying his bags, making a point of cleaning up his den and turning off electricity and water before leaving home.

Jimmy Carter, this virtual unknown former governor from the state of Georgia, becomes our 39th President.

Jimmy Carter was an engineer. He wanted to solve problems, and he said about trying to do that.

He established FEMA and the Department of Energy. He We have 70% of the legislation that he put before Congress.

I have appointed more women to federal courts than all the presidents combined in the history of this country.

Most notably, Ruth Bader Gainsberg.

I think some of his greatest things are probably the environmental work that he did.

Jimmy Carter points to a clean energy future by installing solar panels on the White He didn't just want to be President to be President.

He wanted to be President to save God's Earth.

And there's one historic achievement that seemed impossible at the time. The participants are now beginning to arrive for the opening tomorrow of the big Camp David summit.

Jimmy Carter amazingly got the head of Egypt, the largest Arab country in the region, and the head of Israel, to come to this rustic little place called Camp David.

And in 13 very historic days at Camp David, he fashions a piece between those two nations that continues today.

Peace has come to Israel and to Egypt. There is the freeway handshake. Blessed are the peac, for they shall be the children of God.

He put together the peace treaty, big Arab nations paid him back.

Prices soared over 50% as worldwide oil supplies tightened.

The price of oil doubled in less than 12 months.

Gas prices skyrocket. You can only get gas on certain days.

And this is in a wave of inflation throughout the whole world. The price of everything from a hamburger to an airplane ride has inflated at the rate of 125 %. That last year in the White House, the most stressful. It was the worst year of my life. We're having the hostages held by Iran.

This is World News Tonight. I was doing the Sunday night news on ABC on the fourth of November, 1979. The US Embassy in Tehran has been invaded and occupied by Iranian students.

To America agrees to take the deposed Shah of Iran into our borders in order to get medical treatment. The Ayatollah Khomani, the head of Iran, orders the takeover of the American Embassy.

This This is the fifth agonizing day for the US government.

This was the origination of Nightline to give a daily report on those hostages.

Every single day, it starts with, This is day 21.

Day 30. Day 58, Day 174.

Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan is getting a head start as the Republican candidate.

November fourth, 1980, the election of a President.

The anniversary of their taking of a hostage happened to be on election day.

Even though Carter loses the presidency in 1980 with a humiliating landslide defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan, he is determined to get the 52 American hostages still held in Iran, free.

He lost, but he's still President until January.

There's never been a day that went by. In fact, there's never been an hour that went by since the hostages were taken, that I didn't try to do something to get them home safely. I need to be here till we get the hostages off the ground. I spent my last three days and nights as President. I never went to bed. I just stayed up and negotiated. And we had all the hostages in an airplane at the end of the runway.

Raise your right-hand and repeat after me. I told him he was waiting for Ronald Reagan to take the oath of office. I, Ronald Reagan, do solumly swear. And the moment Reagan took the oath of office. So help me God. Commission was granted for those airplanes to take off.

We got the word that the hostages were free. And I'd say that was probably the most happy moment of my life. Of your life? Yes, I think it was.

Carter essentially creates the playbook for the modern activist post-President's We decided to take on projects that no one else wanted to do.

So you can call on us.

The Carter Center began as my grandparents' life work.

And we actually go in to foreign countries in sometimes a quite dangerous circumstance, work with revolutionaries, and work with the incumbent governments, hold elections to establish democracy, quite often in a little of turmoil and violence. We began to address diseases around the world. They're the disease, a few of which I knew when I was a child in Georgia. The aftermath is very similar to polio.

We turn now to former President Jimmy Carter.

Carter gets brain cancer in 2015.

It was metastasized melanoma. It had already gone into the blood and the liver.

I'm perfectly at ease with whatever comes. I had to have deep religious faith, which I'm very grateful for. I was just completely at ease.

Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Got the Nobel Peace Prize, not for a negotiation creating big peace agreements in olden days, but for the work we're doing in Africa. It's been a very diverse life. Exciting, challenging, unpredictable, adventurous. It has been a full life.

I think it's fair to say of Jimmy Carter. He loved his wife, he loved his family, he loved his country, he loved planet Earth.

President Carter wanted me to say something at his services whenever he passes on. So I've been thinking about it. There's a hym, I keep so busy serving my Jesus. I ain't got time to die.

When I asked Jimmy Carter what he was I was proud of, the first thing he said was, I always told the truth. And then he started smiling.

The Carter Center is one of the ways, and the people in the lives that it touches are one of the ways that he's going to be here forever.

I think Uncle Jimmy would want us to remember that he was true to himself. He was true to himself.

From the bottom of my heart, I want to you the gratitude I feel. Thank you, fellow citizens, and goodbye.

For more about the legacy of Jimmy Carter, make sure to watch Jimmy Carter, A Full Life, a special edition of 2020, now streaming on Hulu.