A Living Tribute

We were told on Tuesday, by a grandson of one of our former Presidents, that his grandfather (who has been in hospice care for around a year and a half) has only days or weeks left. We are getting other messages about his health, but it's good to pay tribute while a great man is still alive.

This is a post I wrote on President Jimmy Carter in 2010, when I visited his birthplace in Georgia.  Now, Mr. Carter is 99. He is our longest lived ex- President.  He was a good man.

Mr. Carter still lives outside Americus, Georgia in a modest house on a family compound. He has been in hospice care for the past 15 months. He taught Sunday school until 2020, when he had to stop during the pandemic.  He worked with Habitat for Humanity for years, having helped build thousands of houses.

He has beat the odds (so to speak), before. In 2015, President Carter was treated for melanoma that spread into his brain. His family also has an extensive history of pancreatic cancer, the cancer that Jeopardy host Alex Trebek bravely battled before his death in 2020.

Whether or not you supported Jimmy Carter when he was President, I think you would admit that he's had quite a life of accomplishment after leaving office in 1981.  Here are some fun facts about him.

Here's my 2010 post. I've reposted it a number of times and I would like to pay tribute to him one last time.

They called him....

The Peanut President

Jimmy Carter has always fascinated me.  He came seemingly out of nowhere, seemed to have what it took to be President, but once he got into office he never succeeded.  Yet, in private life, he has succeeded beyond what may have been his wildest dreams.

What in his upbringing, what in his childhood values, what in his education made this man?

And why has this area of Georgia grown organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and others?  What here was so special?

We are visiting the Americus/Plains area to find out. In this blog entry I am concentrating on Jimmy Carter the man.

This is the house that Jimmy Carter grew up in.

Jimmy Carter grew up outside of Plains, GA in a solidly middle class family.  The actual town, which no longer exists, was called Archery.  The realities of rural life in those days created a childhood of lots of hard physical labor.  His father, loving as he was, did not believe in keeping anything on the farm that did not "pay its own way".   And this was hard farming, although the Carters were rich enough to have tenant farmers.  Still, Jimmy worked side by side with area black farmers, performing distasteful chores such as "mopping cotton".

"Miss Lillian", Jimmy's mother, was a nurse who did not turn anyone away, black or white.

Jimmy's father encouraged Jimmy to work and play alongside of the local black farmers.

The Carters grew cotton, peanuts, and sugar cane.  Student farmers still raise these crops at the homestead today.  They kept goats for meat, and mules to plow the fields.

In this windmill, is the germ of using "alternate energy".  There is nothing new about windpower.

The Plains High School the Carters attended has been closed (as part of consolidating various school districts).  This is a classroom set up the way it would have looked for Jimmy Carter in the 7th grade. Like so many famous people, Jimmy Carter credits a high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, as another great influence on his life.  In 1940 Eleanor Roosevelt invited her to the White House to honor her. 

 This is the outside of the high school.

Plains was the "Big City" for Jimmy Carter.  This is what it looked like in 2010:

Jimmy Carter lives just outside of Plains today, and when he is in town, teaches Sunday School at his church.  This is Jimmy Carter's "Church Home".

When we had first planned our trip, Mr. Carter was not supposed to be in town but this has since changed. We weren't able to change our plans but it certainly would have been interesting.

END OF 2010 POST.     Back to the present.

We never did return to the Plains, Georgia area.

So, Mr. Carter - may you have a pain free transition into wherever we go at the end of our times on Earth, whether it is soon or still to come later.