Features
Requiem for Jimmy Carter
by Nanda Pethiyagoda
Prior to American presidential elections on November 5 last year, Jimmy Carter said he wanted to live to vote for Kamala Harris. His wife Rosalyn had died November 19, 2023, aged 96. They lived, invalided, in a recently furbished hospice in their modest home in Plains. He did live and must have voted. At age one hundred he died on December 29, 2024, with his three sons and daughter Amy beside him, so also 22 grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Personal remembrance
I have a photograph of my son and me with Jimmy Carter and Rosalyn. How this came about was that in 2008, when holidaying in Atlanta where my second son lives, he arranged we spend the September 3-4 weekend in Plains, Georgia. I was an admirer of Carter and he would drop me off at the Carter Centre, Atlanta, on many a day when he drove to office. I spent hours getting to know about this 39th President of the US (1977-81). He built the Carter Center to promote and expand human rights; this commitment to HR earning him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. His life after the years of presidency seemed to have been busier with him active in the Habitat for Humanity organization. Rosalyn and he would travel to countries like Africa to actually work hands-on in building houses for the poor. He also authored many books.
So on Saturday September 3, 2008, we drove to Plains and booked ourselves in a quaint hotel – The Plains Historic Inn and Antiques. The highlight of the weekend was attending Sunday School conducted by Jimmy Carter in the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains. Seats had to be prior reserved and before the Carters came in, precise, detailed instructions were given by a Southern Steel Magnolia – a church goer – as to how the session would proceed and what we should or could not do. The entire service, though precisely stage managed, was informal and showed Carter’s humane nature and lack of the faintest sign of hubris. He asked who was from outer state. Two seated near me whispered I respond. I did by raising my hand. On Carter pointing to me I said: “From overseas – Sri Lanka” to which he promptly announced: “You have a war going on. We pray for peace in your beautiful island.”
The photograph is a privilege allowed all Sunday School goers when the Carters are back home and he conducts Sunday School. Here too strict instructions to follow were given: “Don’t even wish them good morning or say thank you. Stand with them, have your photograph taken and leave.” But when my son and I stood beside them, Carter recognized me from Sri Lanka and again said he hoped our civil war would end soon and human rights and peace restored. This was surprising as I was not in sari. Maybe my colour gave me away!
Brief bio
The next day my son and I toured the Carter peanut farm and his family home. Also visited were the high school he and Rosalyn attended which is now a museum and the small railway station that was his presidential campaign headquarters. All preserved sites within the American National Park Service.
Carter’s home was small and humble. He, James Earl Carter Jr (1924- 2024) was born at the Wise Sanatorium to businessman farmer James Earl Carter Sr and Bessie Lillian Gardy, a registered nurse, who later made a name for herself with social service in India. In his infancy the family moved several times and once lived in an area populated by impoverished African American families. He had two sisters and brother Billy. Though his father was pro-segregation, Jimmy was allowed to make friends with black children. He was often left in the care of a black sharecropper tenant’s wife – Rachel Clark – when his mother had to work late. He became very close to her. The family owned a radio and thus of an evening the open verandah of their home was full of neighbours come over to listen to news or a speech. The toilet was converted to a water closet when Jimmy was a teenager. Still to be seen was the suspended bucket with holes in its bottom and a tap above which was opened when someone wanted a shower.
Pictures and albums were available to reconstruct his life. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1946 and joined the US Navy’s submarine service. Meeting on a blind date arranged by his sister, he fell in love with Rosalyn Smith and they were married on July 7, 1946. Returning home after his naval spell he revived his family’s peanut growing business. He opposed racial segregation and supported the growing civil rights movement and became an activist in the Democratic Party. He served in the Georgia State Senate (1963-67) and became Governor (1971-1975). In 1976, he ran for the presidency as a ‘dark horse’ not well known, and narrowly defeated the incumbent president Gerald Ford. He defeated Ted Kennedy and obtained Democrat Party approval as the contesting candidate for re-election in 1980. He however lost badly to Ronald Reagan.
Evaluation
Robert A Strong wrote: “Jimmy Carter is much more highly regarded today than when he lost his bid for reelection in 1980. He has produced an exemplary post-presidency… Carter took office just thirty months after a President had left the entire federal government in shambles (Nixon). He faced epic challenges – energy crisis, Soviet aggression, Iran and a deep mistrust of leadership by his citizens. He was hard working and conscientious.”
Historians Burton I Kaufman and Scott Kaufman: “It was Carter’s misfortune … of staggering inflation and growing unemployment, oil shock. … hard to avoid the conclusion that Carter’s was a mediocre presidency and his own doing. He was smart rather than shrewd. He was not a careful political planner. He suffered from strategic myopia. He was long on good intentions but short on know-how. He had lofty ideals, such as in human rights … but blinded him to political realities. He was self-righteous, an administrator who micro-managed, but not well. … a president who never adequately defined a mission for his government, a purpose for the country and a way to get there.”
However the general judgment is that he was a fair and just, good human being. His life he lived well in strong Christian faith, often in the service of others.