Oldest Living President Suffers a Broken Hip

America’s 39th Commander-in-Chief, former President Jimmy Carter, has recently suffered a hip injury and had to receive surgery at the age of 94. Carter is not only the oldest living president, but he is actually also the longest living president out of all American presidents, the second being George H. W. Bush, who died recently in November.

Carter’s secretary stated that he was going out to hunt for turkeys when he fell leaving his house. At age 94, still being able to hunt for turkeys is quite an incredible feat. Carter broke his hip leaving his home and had to undergo surgery immediately. Usually having surgery at that age can be very dangerous, but it was a success and Carter is now in the recovery phase. This is but one of the problems that Carter has faced in his older years. In 2015, he announced that doctors had found cancer in his brain, but he has also undergone treatment for that and has been cancer free for some time now. Truly, Carter is a very resilient man, even in his old age.

Carter served in the presidency for one term, from 1977 to 1981. He is one of two engineers to ever serve as president (the other one was Herbert Hoover). Whether Carter’s presidency was actually successful is very hotly debated to this very day. While he was able to broker international peace, especially between the nations of Israel and Egypt, his administration froze when 52 Americans were held hostage in Iran, in what is now known as the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Carter was able to get the hostages back alive, but he has been criticized for not being able to rescue them and instead paying Iran an exorbitant amount of money in exchange for the hostages. Another polarizing factor of Carter’s presidency involves the Panama Canal, which Carter gave back to the Panamanians. Critics lambasted his “giveaway”, arguing that he all but threw away one of America’s most important assets. However, Carter argued that he was doing the right thing. In fact, historians had discovered that no Panamanian had ever agreed to the contract for America to own the Panama Canal; America had actually gotten a French engineer to sign it instead. Carter believed that America had wronged Panama, and worked to make it right. On the moral side, Carter was a truly moral and good person, however, he was often criticized because he was not able to motivate a struggling America or solve many of the problems they faced, such as immense inflation and oil shortages.

We wish the former President a speedy recovery and hope he lives for many more years to come. Six years from now, let us hope that Carter celebrates his 100th birthday and will still be hunting some turkeys.