Jimmy Carter, who passed away yesterday aged 100, had a long relationship with Bermuda, even before his son came here to work in the 1990s.

The longest-living former President of the United States wowed Bermudian politicians and charity workers in 2000 when he and his wife, Rosalind, were guests of honour for the launch of Habitat For Humanity Bermuda, the local branch of the international charity dedicated to providing affordable shelter and homes.

Habitat, a Christian ecumenical movement, has built more than 500,000 houses worldwide, and housed three million people.

Mr and Mrs Carter, Baptist lay preachers and Sunday school teachers, dedicated a significant part of his post-presidential life to building homes for Habitat in the US and around the world.

In an unusual move, at the start of the morning session on June 9, 2000, Stanley Lowe, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, told MPs that the 39th US president would be given the honour of addressing the House.

A short time later, the proceedings were suspended, whereupon Mr Carter took to the dias to deliver impromptu remarks.

He told MPs: “This is truly a great honour for me. We will continue our great interest in your great country and we will continue to admire the democratic principles on which you are founded.

“We thank you deeply for letting us interrupt your important proceedings and we hope to come back and visit one of the most beautiful places on Earth.”

Mr Carter said he first came to the island shortly after the Second World War as a US Navy Ensign.

He explained that he and wife Rosalynn had visited 120 countries since leaving office in 1981 — and said Bermuda was a favourite.

Mr Carter said he “always felt at home” here, and added that Johnny Barnes always had a special welcome for him on Crow Lane.

As he spoke, he was ironically flanked by life-size paintings of King George III and Queen Charlotte, which were left in the 13 rebel colonies in the wake of the signing of the Treaty of Paris that created the United States in 1783.

During the War of 1812, Washington’s enslaved population directed a Bermudian-based British Army unit to the newly completed Executive Mansion, where they would find the paintings and other monarchy-related artefacts that had been left behind three decades earlier.

The items were retrieved and the White House was burnt to the ground.

The army unit would later return to Bermuda and the paintings were gifted to the Parliament.

As president, Mr Carter is known to have met Sir David Gibbons, the Premier, in at least one White House sitting.

In May 1980, a parley scheduled to be just five minutes took place in the Oval Office, arranged at Hawaiian senator Daniel Inouye’s request.

In the 1990s, Mr Carter’s eldest son, Jack, a lawyer, was employed in Bermuda, working at the Bank of Bermuda and Invesco Global Asset Management.

Jack Carter and his wife, Elizabeth, were based in Bermuda for about a decade, and his parents are believed to have called on Bermuda for private visits on at least two occasions.

However, during Mr Carter’s official visit in 2000, the late Specialty Inn waitress Vina Outerbridge was shocked to learn that not only that the former president was seated in her station, but that an unassuming, longtime customer was his son.

Ms Outerbridge, who died in 2017, told: The Royal Gazette in 2000: “I asked [Jack] why he didn’t tell me who he was.”

She added: “He said, ‘Was I supposed to?’”

The Carters and their security detail dined on pizzas and some of Specialty Inn’s popular spaghetti before heading out.

“He [the President] was so friendly and down-to-earth; a real people’s person,” said Ms Outerbridge, who had her photo taken with the Georgian.

The photo and accompanying article are still displayed in the restaurant.

Commissioned into the fleet after graduation from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in the spring of 1946, Mr Carter is believed to have come ashore at the Naval Operating Base, Southampton, now Morgan’s Point, a few years later.

His promising career was cut short in 1953 in the wake of his father’s death to take over operations of the family peanut farm.

An article by TheWashington Post, widely repeated on the internet, claims that Mr Carter had convinced officers on board his unnamed submarine to refuse to attend a segregated event in Bermuda.

The Gazette can confirm the incident was actually in the Bahamas.

Washington & Lee University professor Robert A. Strong in correspondence said recently that the incident had first been reported in several of Carter’s biographies, and expressed regret that he had been misquoted.

At the Habitat For Humanity Bermuda launch at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, Mr Carter told the charity’s administrators that he found it to be “an exhilarating and gratifying experience” to provide homes to people.

He said: “The greatest challenge the world faces in this millennium is the chasm between the rich and poor people on Earth – and the chasm is growing. About 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day.

“Most of us, as human beings, are coming to recognise how blessed we are with security, relative wealth, children who are safe and well-educated, with a decent place to live.

“Most of the world does not share any of those blessings … and religious faith causes us to reach across the chasm that separates the rich from the poor,” he added.

Unlike other Habitat projects, the Bermuda chapter did not intend to build low-income housing. The group would instead focus on renovating substandard housing on the island.

Mr Carter said under the Bermuda Habitat programme, the sponsored family, “people living in places that are somewhat embarrassing to fellow citizens”, must put in hundreds of hours of work into their own home.

In this way, the family develop a sense of ownership and does not feel like the renovations were a handout from wealthy philanthropists, he explained.

Mr Lowe led off the tributes by telling Mr Carter “very few have been accorded the privilege of addressing Parliament”, and thanked him for the “unique and rare opportunity” to meet and hear him.

Dame Jennifer Smith, the Premier, said to Mr Carter: “You will know that Bermuda has always valued its very close ties with the United States.”

Dame Jennifer added that the links dated to the island’s settlement and continued with most of its visitors being from the East Coast of the US.

She said Mr Carter’s home state of Georgia had played a significant role in educating Bermudians.

Dame Jennifer added that Mr Carter shared a home state with the late civil rights champion the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. “I believe many of the same forces which shaped and formed Dr King similarly impacted on President Carter,” she said.

She cited his most notable achievements as brokering the Israeli-Egypt peace deal and a treaty with the former Soviet Union to cut down the two Cold War opponents’ nuclear arsenals.

Dame Jennifer added: “Truly we have in our midst a great humanitarian, a great statesman and a great American.”

Opposition leader Dame Pamela Gordon said she had read his books, including his first, Why Not Be The Best?, adding: “To this very moment, the President and Mrs Carter have given their best in their political life, their business life and in Habitat for Humanity, as well as ensuring free and fair elections throughout the world.”

Environment minister Arthur Hodgson thanked Mr Carter for helping launch a Bermuda branch of Habitat for Humanity, a ground-breaking scheme now operating all over the world to help lower-income families build and own their own homes.

He said he was “not a student of American presidents”, but he added: “Of all those I’ve seen or heard about, President Carter is certainly the best. I don’t just say that as a pro forma compliment.

Mr Hodgson added: “President Carter illustrates the importance of not being concerned with which office you hold, but rather how you hold the office.”

He said: “When the US failed to re-elect him, it was their loss, but the world’s gain. It’s not the office you hold, but how you hold the office God Almighty assigns to us.”

After the speeches, Mr Carter entered the Speaker’s Chambers to sign the Guest Book, and the House proceedings resumed.

He later sent a letter to the House, thanking Mr Lowe and the Members for honouring him and his family during their visit.