Jimmy Carter campaigned for president on a promise of establishing a federal department of education and, after some hedging on his part and multiple internal and external political battles, finally delivered on that pledge late in his one term in office. The creation of the Cabinet-level agency elevated the federal government’s role in education for decades to come.

Carter, the 39th chief executive and the longest-living former president, died Dec. 29 in Plains, Ga., at age 100, some 19 months after going into hospice care. Carter, the first former U.S. president to reach age 100, passed away just over a year after his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, died at age 96 in the couple’s longtime home in Plains.

“I don’t know what history will show, but my guess is that the best move for the quality of life in America in the future might very well be this establishment of this new Department of Education, because it will open up for the first time some very substantial benefits for our country,” Carter said on Oct. 17, 1979, in the East Room of the White House in signing the bill that carved the new Cabinet agency out of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.