Press Clippings
Winston-Salem Journal - May 22, 2005
Plains Living
By Linda Brinson
PLAINS, GA—Say anything bad about Jimmy Carter when you’re in Plains, and someone will probably set you straight.
There are those in other places who still talk about Carter’s one-term presidency as a failure, despite his having won the Nobel Peace Prize three years ago in recognition of his work for peace, democracy and human rights then and in the years since he left office in 1981. There are those who still criticize him as having been too gloomy and downbeat when he was in the White House, even though 25 years later, many of the warnings he gave Americans then prove to have been only too prescient: We did need to learn to conserve energy and other resources, to name one example that ought to be on American minds this summer.
There are those in some places who say that Carter was too stubborn or naïve to be president, and others who say that he was simply too honest and decent for the vicious world of national politics.
Here in his hometown, however, it could not be clearer that “Mister Jimmy” is a huge success story. Along with his wife, Rosalynn, he has been awfully good for this town of 635 people.
When a handful of people from Northwest North Carolina arrived in town in April for the filming of an interview with the Carters for the PBS series SIMPLE LIVING WITH WANDA URBANSKA, townsfolk welcomed them warmly, eager to brag on the town’s most famous citizen. After Carter won the Nobel Prize, journalists from all over the world swarmed over the town. Folks here are equally happy to welcome those from Mount Airy and Winston-Salem, N.C.
The whole town is now within the Jimmy carter National Historic Site and Preservation District, looking much as it did in the 1930s. The block of downtown businesses—two of them competing stores selling fried peanuts, books by and about the Carters. “I Went Nuts in Plains” T-shirts and other souvenirs – sports a huge banner proclaiming Plains as the “Home of Jimmy Carter. Our 39th President.”
The Carters’ presence is everywhere. The redbrick high school they both attended houses the visitors center for the historic site. Around the corner, still occupied but with a historical marker out front, is the small public-housing apartment where the Carters lived when he left the U.S. Navy in the 1950s to take over the peanut farm after his father died. In the middle of the town, the old railroad depot bears a sign identifying it as the presidential campaign headquarters. Across the street is his brother Billy Carter’s service station, no longer in business. Drive just out of town and you come to the modest house on a peanut farm where Jimmy spent his boyhood.
And don’t forget the 13-foot-high chicken wire, aluminum foil and polyurethane peanut that sits beside the road on the edge of town. Word is that Carter would just as soon be able to forget the big-toothed statue, but it’s become part of the history.
Lucky tourists who come to Plains might well see Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in person, because they are very much a part of the town. Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday school regularly at Maranatha Baptist Church, just down the road from the grinning giant peanut. Visitors are welcome, and he usually takes time to pose for pictures after the church service.
The Carters live in Plains, in the only house they have ever owned, a modest 1960s rancher on the main street. The only visible concession to Carter’s elevated status is an incongruous black metal fence, with guardhouses, surrounding the yard.
They also spend considerable time about three hours up the road in Atlanta at the Carter Center, which they founded in 1982. The center is involved in an impressive array of projects that promote peace, health and democracy around the world, especially among the poorest of people. Just as the carters have worked with hammer and saw to build Habitat for Humanity houses long after the cameras stopped whirring, the Carter Center’s projects tend to involve action, not just talk or show.
But Jimmy Carter will turn 81 later this year, and Rosalynn is just three years behind. These days, they are increasingly at home in Plains, where they might be seen riding bicycles, square dancing or fishing. The proprietor of the Plains Trading Post said that Jimmy Carter sat with him for four hours when he was seriously ill a few months back. “He checks on all of us. He’s very involved in the community,” he said.
True to form, the Carters live their beliefs whether on the world stage or the small-town square. The two have pitched in to help with the development of Plains’ tourist business. Upstairs over an antiques mall in that block of buildings is the Plains Historic Inn, owned by the local Better Hometown Program, a development agency. When the inn was being renovated, Carter picked up the phone and secured donations of such things as an elevator and an air-conditioning system. Rosalynn Carter took charge of decorating the rooms, each of which has authentic furnishings from a decade of her husband’s life, from the 1920s through the 1980s.
“I look at myself as one of the many citizens of Plains who volunteer,” Carter said during the TV taping. “None of us is superior to others. We’re all just one team.”
He does readily acknowledge, however, that having been president makes him an especially effective part of that team. History will be the ultimate judge, but conventional wisdom has it that Carter has been more successful as a former president than he was as president. With his characteristics smiling earnestness, he points out that he and his wife wouldn’t have been able to do all that they have accomplished around the world and in Plains in more recent years had they not spent those four years in the White House. “When there is a project to be carried out in Plains, I am able to marshal contributions of materials” and volunteers, he said. “We’ve accomplished a lot in Plains partially because I have been president.”
Not that Jimmy Carter is about to concede that his presidency was unsuccessful. The Iran hostage crisis, raging inflation and the energy crisis contributed to his defeat when he ran for re-election in 1980. So, most likely, did a widespread perception that Carter, a peanut farmer and former governor of Georgia, was out of his league in big-time Washington politics.
The defeat was a bitter disappointment, of course. But nearly 25 years later, both Carters seem to have things in a healthy perspective. No doubt the success of the Carter Center’s efforts has helped ease the pain, and the Nobel Peace Prize came as a major validation. The Carter administration had its share of successes, and Carter gravely touched on some of them during the Simple Living interview. There were, after all, the Camp David Middle East peace accords. There was a restoration of honesty and balance in government, sorely need after the Watergate era. Carter strengthened the United States’ credentials as a champion of human rights and democracy.
He also spent a considerable amount of time and effort as president trying to do something about the energy problems that became increasingly evident during his tenure. One of the reasons the Carters agreed to give Urbanska an interview for the PBS series was that simplicity, conservation, wise use of resources and sharing with the needy continue to be among their guiding values.
“I worked on energy conservation for four years,” Carter said. Many of the laws passed then are still in force, he said, including those mandating greater efficiency in homes and appliances. Unfortunately, he said, later administrations “yielding to the oil companies and automobile manufacturers” an abandoned his efforts to make cars more fuel-efficient. “That’s a real tragedy,” he said. “Out of that comes a general attitude among the American people that we don’t need to conserve energy.”
Carter said that his hope is that the United States will “expand our hearts and minds” and become a true superpower. By that he means, he said, “not just how many bombs we can drop on people or how man times we can win in war” but as “the pre-eminent champion of peace… of human rights, of generosity and sharing.”
With his wife’s editing help, he said, he is finishing up his new book, planned for publication on Nov. 1. Its working title is Our Endangered Values: American Crisis. “Most of the basic values of our country are in danger now,” he said, singling out the threats during the last four years to the “proper balance between religious values and political values, and the danger of breaking down the separation of church and state.”
Both Carters spoke of the small symbolic gestures of the simple life that they made while in the white House, gestures that sometimes earned them ridicule. Rosalynn Carter wore the same dress to the inaugural ball that she’d worn to the governor’s ball in Georgia. (“It was new for me,” she said. “I’d only worn it once.”) They turned down the thermostat and installed wood stoves in the White House and at Camp David.
More than just symbols, these efforts were a part of how they view life, they said. “I believe every American family is (asking), ‘How can I live a life that is enjoyable and simple but one that has the advantages of the latest and most modern technology?’” Carter said. “Simplicity and efficiency of life not only saves energy and other materials but also enhances the quality of life and binds us together.”
“I think sometimes we worry too much about what we don’t have and how to get it,” Rosalynn Carter said. Doing without luxuries, living in Plains after having traveled the world, is no sacrifice, she said. “It’s a wonderful community, and it’s home. People know each other and care for each other. We have been lots of places, but we always come home. I think one of the reasons we enjoy it so much is that when we’re here, we’re just Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.”