To the Editor:

Re “Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024: A Peacemaker Who Never Stopped Striving” (obituary, front page, Dec. 30):

Jimmy Carter improbably became president in large part because the American people rightly perceived him as a good and decent man.

In crucial respects, the Iran hostage crisis and crippling inflation chief among them, Mr. Carter was dealt an unlucky hand during his time in office, one that he was ultimately unable to overcome, despite the historic peace agreement he helped to broker between Israel and Egypt.

Rather than his presidency, what was most admirable and inspiring about Mr. Carter was his post-presidential legacy as a private citizen whose hands-on, roll-up-one’s-sleeves, global humanitarianism spanned several decades.

It is fair to say that it wasn’t until his later years, when he devoted much of his time to work on behalf of others, and exhibited remarkable grace and dignity in the face of grave threats to his health, that Mr. Carter truly set the bar for achieving a meaningful, selfless life.

Mark GodesChelsea, Mass.

To the Editor:

In 2001, a few months after 9/11, I had a short-term job as an election observer for the Carter Center in Nicaragua during the country’s presidential election. The day of the election, I was nearly killed in a car accident that left me with collapsed lungs and in a two-day coma.

When I awoke from the coma, disoriented and half-blind without my glasses, unable to speak because I was intubated, a figure hovered over me and said: “Hello, son. I’m Jimmy Carter, and you’re going to be OK.”

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The accountability office said many of those systems “have critical operational impacts” on air traffic safety and efficiency. Many of them are also facing “challenges that are historically problematic for aging systems,” according to the report.

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