#39. Carter, Jimmy

Linda Lou Burton posting from Little Rock, Arkansas –James Earl Carter Jr, aka Jimmy Carter (b 1924) was the 39^th President of the United States from 1977-1981. As this is written, he is the oldest living former president, and the longest-lived president in US history; reaching his 100^th birthday October 1, 2024. He didn’t win the presidency by landslide; and he didn’t get re-elected for a second term. But he is, by all show of hands, the best-loved “after president” we’ve ever had. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 (21 years after he left the White House) “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” He has befriended the presidents who served after him – Democrats and Republicans alike, offering advice and “buck-up support” as they have come to him; he’s critiqued them too, when he thought they were headed in the wrong direction. He has attended their inaugurations and their funerals; he has voted in every presidential election and expects to do so in 2024.

One of the most down-to-earth gifts of time he has given is his work with Habitat for Humanity. Just out there hammering nails and hanging doors and making sure a family has a decent house to live in. He and former First Lady Rosalynn began as advocates for Habitat in 1984, leading major volunteer building events in the United States, and many Asian countries. “Habitat isn’t charity, it’s partnership,” said Jimmy. “The people who will live in the homes work side by side with the volunteers who help build them. Rosalynn and I have been small players in a global effort to alleviate the curse of homelessness.”

Home, Down On The Farm

James Earl Carter Jr (Jimmy) was born October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, the first of James Earl and Lillian Gordy Carter’s four children – Jimmy, Gloria, Ruth, and Billy. James had a general store and farmland; Lillian worked as a nurse, first at Wise Sanitarium; she gave birth to Jimmy there, so yes, he’s our first president to be born in a hospital. The house they brought him home to was at the end of a dirt road; it had no electricity or running water. Plains was a small town in the 1920s with a population of 479 farmers and a few store keepers. It hasn’t changed much, the 2020 population was 573; 54% black and 42% white; the rural southern culture still revolves around farming, church, and school, although tourism is a major addition now; the National Park Service maintains the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site. “Born and raised” in Plains, both Jimmy, and former First Lady Rosalynn, will both be buried there, but let’s talk about what happened in between, and after, too.

When Jimmy was very young, his Dad gave him an acre to farm; he was industrious with that – yes, he grew and sold peanuts. He played a little basketball in school, but there wasn’t much entertainment in town; he did a lot of reading. Uncle Tom Gordy, his mother’s brother, was in the Navy, and often sent the family postcards from around the globe; Jimmy began to think about the Navy too, and the world beyond Plains. Before he entered high school he wrote the US Naval Academy asking for a catalogue. He graduated Plains High School in 1941; the story goes he and other senior boys skipped school on April Fool’s Day that year and were given zeroes for their prank. So Jimmy wound up as salutatorian rather than valedictorian in that class of twenty-six. And the only one who went on to college.

The Navy, The Marriage, The Children

World War II was going on, and there was stiff competition for admission to the Naval Academy; Jimmy studied at Georgia Tech before being admitted to Annapolis in 1943. He graduated in the top ten percent of his class in August 1946, just after he and Rosalynn Smith got married that July; he was 22, she was 19 and had just graduated from Georgia Southwest College. Jimmy first saw Rosalynn when she was a day old; in fact his mother Lillian delivered her. The Carter and Smith families were friends; one of Rosalynn’s sisters was named after Lillian; one of Jimmy’s sisters became Rosalynn’s best friend. That’s the way it is in a small, close-knit community, though the two didn’t have their first date until 1945. Their marriage lasted 77 years, until Rosalynn’s death in 2023. Jimmy’s comment on the longevity of their partnership: “the secret is to marry the right person.”

With the excitement of a Navy career underway, the newlyweds left Plains in 1946, ready to see more of the world. And they did; son Jack was born in Virginia in 1947. In 1948 Jimmy had officer training for submarine duty and served aboard USS Pomfret, which included a simulated war patrol to the western Pacific and Chinese coast; son Chip was born in Honolulu in 1950. Son Jeff was born in Connecticut in 1952; that was the year Jimmy joined the Navy’s fledgling nuclear submarine program, led then by Hyman Rickover, whose high standards for both men and machines inspired Jimmy.

In March 1953, Jimmy was selected to be an engineering officer for a submarine that was about to begin construction, the USS Sea Wolf. To prepare for the new assignment, he took classes in reactor technology and nuclear physics at Union College in Schenectady, New York; Jimmy and Rosalynnn and the boys lived in military housing nearby.

And then, on July 22, 1953, just two months before construction of Seawolf began, Jimmy’s father, at the age of 58, died of pancreatic cancer. The best-laid plans? Sometimes they change. Jimmy’s mother Lillian couldn’t manage the farm, nor could his sisters Gloria and Ruth. Brother Billy was just 16. Rosalynn was happy with their Navy lifestyle; returning to Plains seemed to her a monumental step backwards. But Jimmy felt obligated. He was released from active duty in the Navy October 9; he and Rosalynn and the boys moved into public housing in Plains. After debt settlements Jimmy’s inheritance was small; he and Rosalynn began to re-adjust their lives. He was 30, she was 27, and the boys were 6, 3, and 1.

Peanuts, and Politics

The transition was hard; that first-year harvest failed due to a terrible drought and net profits totaled $187. Jimmy opened several lines of credit to keep the farm going. He studied agriculture and Rosalynnn learned accounting. In addition to growing peanuts, the Carter farm included a warehouse where Jimmy’s Dad had stored and resold seeds. Jimmy decided to expand the warehouse operation – offering custom peanut shelling and storage; supplying bulk fertilizers and lime; grinding and mixing corn; storing ginned cotton. He even added fire and casualty insurance to the services provided by his agri-business. And the business thrived. By 1959 Jimmy began to be involved in the local community by serving on boards for civic entities. He became a deacon at the Plains Baptist Church. In 1962, he ran for state Senate; during two terms there he attacked wasteful government practices and helped repeal laws designed to discourage blacks from voting. And in his Baptist Church, when members voted to exclude blacks from worship there, Jimmy and Rosalyn voted to integrate.

Somewhere between “Yes, I cut down the cherry tree,” and “No, I did not erase the tapes,” is there a “George Washington Approved” lie? I don’t know, but I know for certain if you’re one facet of a government made up of hundreds of legislators and millions of voters, you must work with people. And idealist Jimmy, with all his smarts, and good intentions, and sense of right, was a “do-it-yourselfer.” He was hard hit when he lost his 1966 bid for governor of Georgia to segregationist Lester Maddox; he campaigned honestly as conservative, moderate, and liberal, which he was. But he lived in a state where many folks still considered “Dixie” their national anthem. So in 1970 he changed tactics; he continued to seek the black vote, but he also conferred with George Wallace; his appeal to racism was blatant. And he won. Then, in his inaugural speech as the new governor of Georgia he said what he really had in mind, declaring “the time of racial discrimination is over,” and shocking the crowd.

And then he didn’t engage with his fellow politicians, which made him unpopular with the legislature. That’s the way he did things in his four years as governor of Georgia; that’s the way he wound up doing things in his four years as President of the United States. Being “unknown nationally” worked in Jimmy’s favor in 1976. The grudge against Nixon-Ford was still in voter’s minds and they wanted a change. The “Jimmy Who?” choice tantalized — Georgia peanut dust was way more appealing than Washington dirt. Jimmy made it in by a hair. But even a hair opens the door, right?

Jimmy and Rosalynn started a new tradition January 20, 1977, Inauguration Day. After the swearing in on both a family Bible and a Bible used by George Washington, they walked the parade route along Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House, an endearing gesture. But Jimmy’s independence didn’t mix well with the “Washington” way of doing business. He avoided phone calls from members of Congress. He didn’t return political favors. It didn’t take long until the Democrats were on his back. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill said it is “inappropriate for a president to pursue what has traditionally been the role of Congress.” In 1979, when the House voted against giving him a standby gas rationing plan, he delivered remarks saying he was embarrassed for the American government because “House Members are unwilling to take responsibility for a serious threat to our nation.” Republicans accused him of “making comments not befitting the formality a president should have in public remarks.” By 1980 voters were tired of listening. And Hollywood was waiting in the wings. The Carters moved back to Plains.

Before he left for Washington in 1977, Jimmy placed the family farm supply business into the protection of a blind trust, which allowed a law firm in Atlanta to manage the business during his years in the White House. When Jimmy and Rosalynn returned to Plains in 1981, they were informed that due to three years of drought and several changes in warehouse management, they were over $1 million in debt. Their solution? They sold the business and began writing books.

Over the next 40 years they experienced the best of “the life they both wanted.” They lived in snug familiarity where they grew up, in the only home they’ve ever owned. There’s a pond out front that Jimmy dug for fly fishing, and a woodshop out back. And they traveled the world, making an impact unmatched by any. More than 65 countries have honored them, welcomed them, or benefited from their efforts. Just two perky kids from Plains, Georgia, who had a few ideas. That blip in the White House was short, but it empowered them with a special “notability” that may have been worth it all.

Post Script

Somehow I got this far without Rosalynn’s early-life details, or any mention of daughter Amy, let me catch up. Eleanor Rosalynnn Smith (1927-2023) was born August 18, 1927 in Plains, Georgia, the eldest of the four children of Wilburn Edgar and Frances Murray Smith; her brothers were Jerry and Murray, her sister Lillian. Dad was an auto mechanic and farmer, Mom was a teacher and dressmaker. “We didn’t have much money,” Rosalynn said, “but neither did anyone else, so as far as we knew we were well off.” Her father died of leukemia in 1940 when she was thirteen; Rosalynn assisted in the dressmaking business to meet the family’s financial obligations. Rosalynn was valedictorian of her Plains High School class of 1944; she went to Georgia Southwest College and graduated in 1946, valedictorian again – then she and Jimmy married.

After having three sons close together by 1952, on October 19, 1967 a daughter was born. The boys had voted on “having a sister” and even picked out her name a year earlier — Amy Lynn Carter. Amy lived in Plains until the family moved to the Governor’s Mansion in Georgia; she was nine when they moved to the White House. “The boys were so much older than Amy it was like she had four fathers,” said Rosalynn. “They had to take turns spoiling her.” Amy had a Siamese cat named Misty Malarky Ying Yang. And her Daddy wrote her a story-tale book The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer, which she illustrated, you can buy it on Amazon today.

The Carter story can’t end without mentioning “Miss Lillian” again. Though her husband and three of her children died at an early age of pancreatic cancer, she lived a busy life for 85 years. She made headline news in 1966, when at the age of 68 she joined the Peace Corps and worked at the Godrej Colony 30 miles from Mumbai, India as a nurse. She got as much attention as Amy during Jimmy’s White House years, even appearing as herself in a Lucille Ball movie “Calling the President.”

Would I invite the Carters to my party? Oh yes, I love that south Georgia drawl.