SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Governor Kristi Noem has ordered flags be flown at half-staff through late January in honor of former President Jimmy Carter.
The 39th president of the United States died Sunday at the age of 100.
But Carter’s work after the Oval Office is what many people remember him for.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter first volunteered for Habitat for Humanity in the 1980s.
The Carters brought more awareness to the cause.
“Habitat for Humanity had really started gaining a little bit of traction in the 80s, and then President Carter started volunteering in 1984, and really just blew the doors open,” said Rocky Welker, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sioux Falls.
The Carters helped build and improve homes around the globe for decades.
“He helped swing hammers right alongside volunteers well into his 90s,” Welker said.
“Every time we’ve ever been out as volunteers, leading a project no matter where it’s been…in this country or around the rest of the world, at the end of the habitat project, we always feel that Rose and I got more out of it than we put into it,” Carter said in 2018 at a Habitat for Humanity event in Indiana.
Carter was the longest-living U.S. president in the country’s history.
“Politics by nature are very divisive, but I think that both Republicans and Democrats have universally agreed that very few presidents, if any, have done as much as President Carter did post-presidency for the world,” Welker said.
