Hundreds of friends and family grieved Friday at a memorial for former White House aide Hamilton Jordan, and President Jimmy Carter said he would miss his right-hand man for the rest of his life.

Jordan, 63, died Tuesday at his Atlanta home. His battle with cancer began 22 years ago, when he was diagnosed with lymphoma, followed by bouts with melanoma and prostate cancer.

“I love Hamilton like my own son,” Carter said to a standing-room only crowd of more than 500 at the Carter Center auditorium.

Carter said his chief of staff was a “driving force behind the Panama Canal treaty, the Middle East peace process, the safe return of our hostages from Iran and every other good thing that we ever accomplished or attempted while in Washington.”

Jordan was born in Charlotte, N.C., in 1944 and raised in Albany, Ga. He graduated from the University of Georgia with a political science degree in 1967.

Jordan helped draft Carter’s innovative 1976 campaign strategy, and was credited with conceiving a plan to start campaigning years in advance and target early voting states to build support from early upsets.

After Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980, Jordan ran in a Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in 1986. He lost to Wyche Fowler, who won the general election.

Jordan worked for H. Ross Perot’s presidential bid in 1992.

Later he worked with Unity08, an independent political group founded by independent Angus King, the former governor of Maine and others.

Former Vice President Walter Mondale, ex-U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn and former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young also attended the memorial.