Grandson: Jimmy Carter 'doing fine' after being taken off Cleveland flight with upset stomach
Former President Jimmy Carter, on a trip promoting his new book, developed an upset stomach on a flight to Cleveland on Tuesday and was taken to a hospital, officials said.
Carter's grandson, Georgia state Sen. Jason Carter, said his 85-year-old grandfather was doing fine.
"He's definitely resting comfortably and expected to continue his book tour this week," Jason Carter said. "I haven't talked to him, but nobody in the family is concerned."
Carter said earlier on his Facebook page that his grandfather had left the hospital, but he later told The Associated Press he had the wrong information. A spokeswoman at MetroHealth hospital in Cleveland confirmed he was still there Tuesday afternoon.
Carter was a passenger on a Delta Air Lines flight from Atlanta to Cleveland when he became ill. After the plane landed, he was taken off by rescue crews, said Jackie Mayo, a spokeswoman at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
He was wheeled into an emergency room at MetroHealth on a stretcher and later was up and walking around, said Mary Atkins, who had taken her daughter to the hospital for medical treatment and saw Carter from a nearby room.
"He walked by the room and he was saying he was ready to go," she said. "They had Secret Service everywhere."
The Carter Center, the Democrat's Atlanta-based think tank, said Carter was expected to resume his book tour this week.
President Barack Obama, stopping at a restaurant in Albuquerque, N.M., said he planned to call Carter to see how he is.
Carter was scheduled to sign copies of his new book, "White House Diary," at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in suburban Cleveland on Tuesday afternoon, according to the store's event coordinator, Calondra McArthur. About 500 people were waiting in line at the store, she said.
In the book, Carter said he pursued an overly aggressive agenda as president that may have confused voters and alienated lawmakers. But he said the tipping points that cost him the 1980 election were the Iran hostage crisis and the Democratic primary challenge by U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Carter, a former peanut farmer elected to the White House in 1976, has spent his recent years pursuing peace and human rights, efforts that won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
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Associated Press writers Matt Leingang, Jeannie Nuss and JoAnne Viviano contributed to this report from Columbus, Ohio; along with Greg Bluestein in Atlanta.
Source: AP News
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