Former President Jimmy Carter’s house was filled with items like so many other southern grandparents’: fishing trophies, a phone with a landline and a fridge covered with photos of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, his grandson Jason Carter said.

“And demonstrating their Depression-era roots, they had a little rack next to the sink where they would hang Ziploc bags to dry,” Jason Carter said, as the crowd laughed.

“In my 49 years, I never perceived a difference between his public face and his private one. He was the same person,” Jason Carter said. “For me, that’s the definition of integrity.”

“His political life and his presidency, for me, was not just ahead of its time — it was prophetic. He had the courage and strength to stick to his principles, even when they were politically unpopular,” Jason Carter said. “As governor of Georgia half a century ago, he preached an end to racial discrimination and an end to mass incarceration. As president in the 1970s, as you’ve heard, he protected more land than any other president in history. Fifty years ago, he was a climate warrior who pushed for a world where we conserved energy, limited emissions and traded our reliance on fossil fuels for expanded renewable sources.”

Jason Carter highlighted how through his work at the Carter Center, his grandfather nearly eradicated guinea worm disease through “love and respect.”

There used to be 3.5 million cases each year, and last year, there were 14, Jason Carter said.

“The thing that’s remarkable is that this disease is not eliminated with medicine. It’s eliminated essentially by neighbors talking to neighbors about how to collect water in the poorest and most marginalized villages in the world. And those neighbors truly were my grandfather’s partners for the last 40 years,” he said. “And as this disease has been eliminated in every village in Nigeria, every village in Sudan or Uganda, what’s left behind in those tiny, 600 person villages is an army of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carters who have demonstrated their own power to change their world.”

President Carter’s beloved wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, died on Nov. 19, 2023, at the age of 96.

Jason Carter said that, in recent weeks, his grandfather “told us he was ready to see her again.”