One of my favorite stories of President Jimmy Carter is when I was having to go cover a press conference at Georgia Southwestern State University. It was one of those nice Spring afternoons and I was glancing out the window because you don’t want to be inside when I heard the doors open and I turned around expecting to see Michael Hanes, who was president of the college at the time.
But it was actually President Jimmy Carter. He’s strolling through the room at a normal pace with his security detail and notices that a cameraman from one of the nearby TV stations is still setting up. He comments, “Perfect timing, we can get out of here before they get the cameras set up.” And then he flashed that famous grin of his and glanced around at me and the news crew and asked us how we were doing.
You hear so many awful stories of how famous people act that you know when Jimmy asked each and everyone one of us, “How are you?” he meant it. I’ve heard stories of how Michael Jordan wanted the police to isolate one city block of a busy area because he had to walk from a parking garage across the block to a restaurant or some gala. And then there’s Jennifer Lopez and all the ugly stories about how she’s treated those in the food and service industry as well as the general public.
Jimmy, as he was called by just about any and everyone in Plain, never put on airs. Despite the aftermath of Hurricane Helene last week, I heard they still had the Plains Peanut Festival. Even a couple of weeks after 9/11 when I worked there, you would be surprised how easy it was just to walk up to him and Rosalynn and shake their hands or pat them on the back. Of course, the county sheriff, Plains Police and Georgia State Patrol were everywhere along with the Secret Service to make sure the Peanut Festival went off without a hitch.
It had been in the works for a while but they were going to start construction on Plains Historic Inn and Antique Mall in early 2002. But when they had finally presented the renderings to the public, I went to a meeting at the Plains High School, which had been turned into a museum. If I remember correctly, it was December 2001 which was odd because it was raining that evening, and Jimmy was there along with the Plains officials, architect, county officials, etc. And like an excited kid, he is waving at me to come over here to look at this rendering from the architects making sure I got everything of importance in my notes and lots of pictures. He was very excited about the project that opened in the spring of 2002.
We did stories of the building’s construction which Jimmy also helped out when when he was 77 at the time. One of my former colleagues, Ken Garner, took numerous pictures as they were finishing it up set for a grand opening. But one photo we laughed about but was never used was the “Al Bundy photo.” The hotel rooms are each furnished in the style of a certain decade from the 1920s when he was born to the 1980s when he left the White House. There was a picture of Jimmy smiling with that big grin next to an old-fashioned toilet. It looked like he was proud of the toilet he had helped install. It reminded me of the Married…With Children episode where Al is so excited to get a new toilet.
Today, Oct. 1, he turns 100, becoming the longest living former President ever, bypassing George H.W. Bush by about five-and-a-half years. The elder Bush was still the oldest living former President at one time and the first to turn 94. At the time of his death on Nov. 30, 2018, Jimmy was 94 days and 61 days. And at the time, the outlook was grim for Jimmy. He had been diagnosed with brain cancer nine years ago. But thanks to treatments, he’s managed to live as long as he has.
Of course, people who know Jimmy know he’s one who always thinks positive and does all he can to live a life in accordance with his Christian faith. He’s in poor health and old age now to teach Sunday School but he did often bring in the crowds. And while other former Presidents get affluent houses in the most affluent neighborhoods once they leave the Oval Office, Jimmy and Rosalynn just decided to return back to the small-town of Plains where they grew up.
As his grandson, Jason (who used to briefly be my neighbor), wrote in his book Power Lines, Jimmy had entered a McDonalds in the nearby Cordele, Ga., to which a woman scream, “Oh, my God! You’re here!” Even though he didn’t voice it, Jimmy was part of an episode of King of the Hill where Hank Hill, who is mostly a conservative, is actually starstruck by the former Commander-in-Chief.
In early 2002, the publisher of the Americus Times-Recorder wanted to do a 25th anniversary special edition of Carter’s inauguration. I was tasked with the job of tracking down the former journalists who worked the campaign trail and it was difficult. But the stories I did get were very happy and reminiscent of an era that is no more. It was America’s bicentennial and the effects of Watergate were still lingering.
It also didn’t help that a month after being sworn in as the 38th President, Gerald Ford gave Richard M. Nixon a “full, free and absolute pardon.” I think Americans were beginning to see that the fat-cats and bigwigs were always get away with everything. That’s why it seemed some Americans gravitated to Jimmy, who was the former governor of Georgia. It seemed America needed someone who wasn’t “part of the system.” What I heard was there was hope and optimism on the campaign trail.
Unfortunately, Carter had inherited a big mess as the political turmoil and energy crisis seemed to overshadow his Presidency. Then there was the American Embassy in Iran being overtaken. And then there was the infamous “Malaise Speech.” What is so crazy is that people want a President who tells the truth and when Jimmy did, he was crucified for it. But what people really want is a President who tells them what they want to hear, even if it’s not the truth.
The tragedy was Jimmy wasn’t liked by the rise of corporate America in the 1970s. That’s why they liked Ronald Reagan so much. However, recently, former Sen. Phil Gramm, a Republican and economist, wrote in the conservative Wall Street Journal, Jimmy was a champion of deregulation. “Without Mr. Carter’s deregulation of airlines, trucking, railroads, energy and communications, America might not have had the ability to diversify its economy and lead the world in high-tech development when our postwar domination of manufacturing ended in the late 1970s. The Carter deregulation helped fuel the Reagan economic renaissance and continues to make possible the powerful innovations that remake our world,” he wrote.
Yet, Jimmy is blamed for a lot of things that just weren’t his fault. The rise of the Moral Majority led to a change in American politics where the President had to also be a faith leader. Sadly, they attached themselves to Reagan and questioned Jimmy’s true faith. But anyone who really knows Jimmy or even talked with him for 10-15 minutes would know what really happened. President Carter said “thanks for but no thanks” to Rev. Jerry Falwell and that angered him.
The Moral Majority started out as opposition to forced integration as Bob Jones University was refusing to integrate. And it was reported that Oral Roberts University wasn’t going to let non-whites in either. However, people began to accept more racial diversity but they were opposed to abortion, so that became the Majority’s baby, so to speak.
One of the stories I was told to work on was how the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, where he attended and taught Sunday School, was former because another church in town didn’t want to allow black people. Now, anyone who knows about this part of Georgia, it’s very diverse and most young white and black kids often play and go to school together. They work together. And they go to the same churches together. Yet there’s still a lot of people who like to think the South won the Civil War. Of course, no one really wanted to go on record and the mayor at the time just said it was more than just racial issues.
This is the first birthday in a long time Jimmy is celebrating without his wife, Rosalynn, with him. She passed away Nov. 19, 2023 last year and as Jimmy has been grieving it must have been hard on him and his family. But if there is a Heaven, we all know Rosalynn is just waiting patiently and eager for Jimmy to arrive at the Pearly Gates.
However, no one wishes him any harm, especially me. Very few people in the grand history of human civilization live to be 100. And he’s the only former President to achieve such a milestone. He’s achieved so much in his life as a lawmaker, a Navy officer, a world leader, and as a builder with Habitat for Humanity and philanthropist/activist with the Carter Center.
We don’t also achieve or accomplish what we hope to in life. But at least, Jimmy has done enough for many lifetimes.
Happy Birthday, sir! Hope you have a great day!
Zane Says 