Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

After college, I took a job working as a reporter for the Americus Times-Recorder in Americus, Ga. The town was located in southwest Georgia maybe about 10 miles from Plains, where former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, live to this day. It was your typical small town in the south with the few businesses that were open are concentrated in one area and there’s a downtown main street that you could stand in the middle of and see everything you clearly needed to see in a panaroma view.

Yet the Carter Compound stuck out like a sore thumb. You’d be driving on a small country highway and then off to the side is a huge gate that looks like it shouldn’t be anywhere near a town like Plains. A sign warns that there’s no entry without prior approval. And you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that someone of importance lived there. I never stepped foot on the compound even though I stood arms length away from both the Carters and multiple times. I shook their hands. We chatted small talk.

I had more of a personal connection to them that I guess struck their attention. I grew up in Calhoun, Ga., a town in northwest Georgia, a good 230 miles north of the area. The town was where Bert Lance, the director of Office Management and Budget briefly during Carter’s first year as President. He had to resign due to a scandal that was later used as a punchline in Good Times. So, if you mentioned you were from Calhoun in the Americus area, people would ask about the Lance family.

But even more personal to Jimmy and Rosalynn than the Lance family was their own family, as in their son, Jack, who was married to Juliet Langford, who was from the Calhoun area. Jack and Juliet along with their children, involving son, Jason, lived a few doors down from where I grew up. At the time, we were technically outside the city limits (before it was all annexed) so the secluded area of the street probably gave them the privacy they needed as the son and then-daughter-in-law of the President. (Jack and Juliet would later divorce.)

Jimmy and Rosalynn, when their daughter, Amy, was still young, visited once. I saw the pictures my parents took. What stood out was the outfit that that Amy had worn including knee-high socks and an light grey English school boy outfit she probably wish she had never worn. According to everyone else, security on the road was tight. Our neighbor across the street was the Secret Service agent assigned to Jack and Juliet’s family. When talking to Jimmy about this, he said in a passive-aggressive way that the Secret Service had ordered his family to have the security. I got the feeling he wouldn’t have sought the Presidency without thinking of his family first.

I was still young when this happened, maybe 1 or so. Someone once said there was a picture of Jimmy holding me but I have never seen it. It might have been one of those pictures someone snapped but didn’t think too much about and it’s in someone’s drawer or a dusty photo album that hasn’t been touched since 1987. My older brother said despite the security, they were very welcoming to the neighbors.

But the best story I have to say about Jimmy was back in the spring of 2002. It was one of those days in late April or early May where it’s the greenest it will be as everything is in bloom. The sun is out. The clouds are sparingly but there’s no threat of a storm. Michael Hanes, the president of Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, was giving a press conference in early afternoon. I have no memory of the purpose of the press conference but it was important. I think it was a program the university was beginning to implement.

Anyway, I’m standing in one of the buildings, waiting near the entrance. My notebook is in my backpocket. I have a camera to get pics just in case. I’m glancing out the window watching all the students wander around the campus. A news crew from a station from Columus, Ga. or Albany, Ga. is there setting up. I hear a door open behind me and I turn around thinking it was Hanes coming out, but it was a different president.

It was Jimmy and Rosalynn, dressed in their Sunday best, walking through the foyer area where the press conference was to be. Jimmy takes one look at the camera man setting up and jokingly says, “Perfect timing. We’re leaving before they can get the cameras rolling.” Jimmy flashes his famous smile at all of us and asks us, “How are you doing?”

I think they had been attending a luncheon in another room that was in the building. It’s possible Hanes was there, trying to get through the usual contacts with donors and civic leaders he has to make before he can do the 10-15 minute press conference. It wasn’t really a surprise to see the Carters. They lived in the community. They were usually out and about. In his book, Power Lines, that Jason wrote about his time in the Peace Corps, he delivered an anecdote of a woman freaking out when seeing him at a McDonalds in the nearby town of Cordele. She couldn’t believe a former President would be at a fast food restaurant in a small Georgia town.

But that’s the Carters. They don’t put on airs. Seeing them around town was like seeing your doctor or teacher at the supermarket. You exchange pleasantries but you don’t think much about it. The sad part is I don’t think many other former Presidents would act this way. Maybe Barack Obama would casually stroll through a building asking people how they’re doing because he wanted to be friendly. Bill and Hillary Clinton would’ve done the same, I’m certain.

I don’t think George W. Bush would be so non-chalant and pleasant. The greatest trick they pulled was convincing voters he was an “outsider.” He wasn’t. He got Hollywood production designers to make up the Prairie Chapel Ranch near Crawford, Texas as if it was some old old-style ranch in Texas. But his inexperience in being a “cowboy” was shown by his need to constantly cut down trees. I covered an event where a GSW graduate who was part of his medical staff discussed his obsession with unneccessary brush work.

Now, W. lives in the Preston Hollow neighborhood of the Dallas area. It’s the type of neighborhood the people never thought of being cowboys even at Halloween. And they closest they came to a cow as George Carlin once said, is “when they stopped to take a piss at an Arby’s.” It’s funny that even though W. was born a Yankee in New Haven, Conn., ever was able to appeal to southern voters. But the Dallas-Fort Worth area in its present days is a far cry from what people think of when it comes to Texas. More and more people are moving to the Lone Star state and it’s changing the likes and culture. I’m not surprised a former President would live in Big D in the 21st Century.

I know good and well, Trump would’ve never been that friendly. He would’ve pointed at all of us and called us “fake news” and demanded his security detail seize our cameras to make sure any footage of him wasn’t taken. But the likelihood that Trump would’ve been in a town like Americus would be impossible unless someone was giving him a huge cashier check for his campaign. He also wouldn’t have walked out the front door as the Carters did just two people leaving a social event. Nothing to see here.

I think that’s why the Carters have garnered such popularity and admiration. Even the publisher of the paper at the time was a die-hard conservative Republican and he considered anything related to them to be front-page news. When we did a special section for the 25th anniversary of Carter’s inauguration, I called on many media who were part of the press corps and they said that it was different from anything they covered before and anything they’ve covered since.

Jimmy ran for President during America’s bicentennial year but he also ran in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. I agree to some degree with what Hunter S. Thompson wrote when he said that the Republican Party didn’t go fully into the 1976 Presidential Election because they knew convincing many voters Gerald Ford should be elected was a hard choice. Ford had pardoned Richard M. Nixon, something that angered conservatives and moderates. It cost Ford the election and even the Republican National Convention was contested between Ford and Ronald Reagan.

The journalists I spoke with said it had more of a humble and relax feel to it. Jimmy didn’t give out “canned speeches” as one of them said. Footage from the era shows how the media and the world converged in the small town Plains. Jimmy was shown during one moment inviting members into the church saying they were many spots available. But Jimmy wasn’t inviting them because he wanted them to get pictures and news reel footage of him attending church. He was invited them in because that’s what church members do. They open their doors to anyone and everyone. Or at least that’s what they are supposed to do.

I definitely don’t think any other Presidential candidate would’ve been that friendly. And I think most media wouldn’t have been so willing to turn off their cameras and leave their reporter notebooks behind and open a hymn book. People joking that Jimmy was a peanut farmer don’t realize that is one of the prime crops that grew in Georgia red clay. Many peanut farmers live quite comfortable with a nice bank account.

But a farmer who joins the Navy and marries his childhood sweetheart before becoming the governor of Georgia and then the President is the epitome of the American dream. In many ways, he was the all-American boy archetype. The student athlete who loves God and Jesus and remains true to his roots is what conservative Republicans exploit as their bread and butter.

Sadly, Carter was President during one of the worst moments in America. The Vietnam War had just ended with the Fall of Saigon. He was having to deal with the Energy Crisis of 1979. Cocaine was becoming a rising drug of choice and crime was rising because of it. And the American manufacturing industry was finally starting to collapse with the Rust Belt regions showing true signs that the great days of the post-WWII era were over. And then there was the American embassy hostages in Iran. People blamed Carter when they elected Reagan but he didn’t improve things any better despite the Republican’s motto “Reagan Rebuilt America.”

In many ways Carter helped rebuild America as he focused on Habitat for Humanity and other charity organizations. To be honest, I lost a lot of respect for King of the Hill when they went after him in an episode in season six. Ana Gasteyer of Saturday Night Live, was a childhood friends with Amy, and said Jimmy found SNL‘s mockery of him hilarious. As a public and elected figure, Jimmy knew he was open to ridicule and he accepted that. But some of it, in my opinion, has been downright disgusting and cruel.

And now, that I know Greg Daniels and Mike Judge were involved much during King of the Hill during this time, that explains how it became a show for conservative because it stopped being funny. In the end, Jimmy had the last laugh. At 99 today, he has the distinction of being the oldest-living American President and the longest living after he left office. And even though I know he won’t gloat about it, he does have to smile some knowing he’s living longer and is now more respected Christian figure than Jerry Falwell, who made the outrageous comment that Reagan’s election put a true Christian in the White House.

Jimmy is the true Christian, as a man who loved his enemies and lived a humble life. Earlier this year, he was placed under hospice care as he has been diagnosed with metastatic melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain. That was seven months ago. Rosalynn, who turned 96 in August, has been diagnosed with dementia. Both of them know that every new day is a blessing when you’re in good health and bad health.

My biggest concern is just like George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, there won’t be much time between when one passes and then the next. The grief will be too much for the other to endure. It’s bad even when you’re in better health. I know. As my late girfriend’s birthday was this past Friday and it’s the second time I’ve recognized it with her gone. And it doesn’t get much easier around this time.

But hopefully, the Carters can have this day as day of happiness and joy. We never know what tomorrow might bring. So, please join me in wishing Jimmy a Happy Birthday!

What do you think? Please comment.