Voice of America :
It was a life that took him from peanut farming to the presidency. While former United States (US) President Jimmy Carter’s time in the White House lasted only one term, the decades afterward were defined by humanitarian work that affected people all around the world.
Founding the Carter Center with his wife, Rosalynn, he became a global champion for democracy, human rights and public health. And he still took time to teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Georgia.
Carter was the nation’s longest-lived president when he died Sunday at age 100. But he was just one of many noteworthy people who died in 2024.
Alexey Navalny, who died in prison in February, was a fierce political foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, crusading against corruption and staging protests against the Kremlin. He had been jailed since 2021 when he returned to Russia to face certain arrest after recovering in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.
Other political figures who died this year including Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, Vietnamese politician Nguyen Phu Trong, US representative Sheila Jackson Lee, former Soviet prime minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, pundit Lou Dobbs, Greek politician Vasso Papandreou, former US senators Joe Lieberman, Jim Inhofe, Tim Johnson and Jim Sasser, Namibian president Hage Geingob, and former Lebanese prime minister Salim Hoss.
The year also brought the deaths of several rights activists, including the Reverends Cecil L “Chip” Murray and James Lawson Jr, Dexter Scott King, Hydeia Broadbent, and David Mixner.
Business leaders who died this year include Indian industrialist Ratan Tata, Home Depot co-founder Bernard “Bernie” Marcus, financier Jacob Rothschild, and Daiso retail chain founder Hirotake Yano.
OJ Simpson’s “trial of the century” over the 1994 killings of his ex-wife and her friend exposed divisions over race and law enforcement and brought an intersection of sports, crime, entertainment and class that was hard to turn away from. His death in April ended a life that had become defined by scrutiny of the killings.
Other noteworthy sports figures who died include basketball players Jerry West and Dikembe Mutombo, baseball players Willie Mays and Fernando Valenzuela, and gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi.
The music industry lost a titan in producer Quincy Jones, who died in November. His many contributions included producing Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album and working with hundreds of other musicians over a long and storied career.
Other artists and entertainers who died this year include: actors James Earl Jones, Chita Rivera, Donald Sutherland, Gena Rowlands, Louis Gossett Jr, Shelley Duvall, Kris Kristofferson, Linda Lavin, Sandra Milo, Anouk Aimee, Carl Weathers, Joyce Randolph, Maggie Smith, Tony Todd, Shannen Doherty and Song Jae-lim, musicians Sergio Mendes, Toby Keith, Phil Lesh, Melanie, Dickey Betts, Françoise Hardy, Fatman Scoop, Duane Eddy and Frankie Beverly, filmmakers Roger Corman and Morgan Spurlock, authors Faith Ringgold, Nikki Giovanni and N Scott Momaday, TV fitness guru Richard Simmons, sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer, talk show host Phil Donahue, and poets Shuntaro Tanikawa, John Sinclair and Kazuko Shiraishi.
