Jimmy Carter sits beside his wife, Rosalynn, during a 2018 interview in Plains, Ga.Photo:Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty
Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty
When my husband and I set out for Plains, Ga., it was with trepidation. It’s not every day that you meet a United States president.
We nearly missed our flight out of New Jersey, an event that had never happened before, because though I am always late, my husband is always early.
Once we arrived in Atlanta, we had a problem with our credit card at the car rental. And later, I developed imposter syndrome as I sat in The Carter Center library, researching PresidentJimmy Carter’s archives on car safety.
I was visiting The Carter Center because my father had died in a crash with a distracted driver when I was 25 and he was 54, and we’d just discovered an unfinished bucket list he’d left behind. Item six was “talk with the President.”
Onmy dad’s list of 60 goals, which I decided to see through, he hadn’t written that he hoped to “meet” a president. Or even see a president. No, at age 29, the year I was born, my father decided that he hoped to talk with a president — strike that, he hoped to “talk with THE president.”
It was 1978 then, and Jimmy Carter was president.
He was also the only former president whose foundation had answered my email.
Laura Carney and her husband pose with Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter at the Maranatha Baptist Church.Courtesy of Laura Carney
Courtesy of Laura Carney
But at every turn of this trip, it seemed, I came up against more and more obstacles. Even the hotel we’d been advised to book — the one that guaranteed entry at President Carter’s Sunday school in Plains,where he’d taught 35 Sundays a yearsince leaving office in 1980 — was sold out. His lessons could attract as many as 500, from all over the country. So there was still a chance we might fly home having not even glimpsed a president.
I assume my father believed he could do this because for a short time during Carter’s presidency, he accepted phone calls from everyday Americans. In October 1979, National Public Radio collected questions from the public, and then called Americans in their homes with President Carter on the line, live from the Oval Office.Here’s how he responded to a womanwho complained that the media should use a better title than “Mr.” when addressing him:
Jimmy Carter on NPR’s ‘Ask the President’ in 1979
“When Washington became the first president, there was a move made to give him some sort of title, and he objected to this. And there was some doubt about how he should be addressed during his term of office, and also John Adams. When Thomas Jefferson became president, he insisted that everyone call him ‘Mr. Jefferson.’
On Carter’s Inauguration Day, he walked the streets of D.C., as opposed to riding with the Secret Service — something Thomas Jefferson was the first to do, and something Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump would repeat, some 30 years later.
Jimmy Carter was our country’s most accessible president.
But I hadn’t realized this yet, sitting in The Carter Center’s library archives, wondering how the heck I’d get this done.
Laura Carney at The Carter Center archives.Courtesy of Laura Carney
After a tour of The Carter Center, I begged my tired husband to climb Stone Mountain, a spot where my parents had taken photos in 1974 — my mom was an alumna of University of Georgia and showing my father around. Because our climb took so long, we didn’t arrive at our second-choice hotel until 11 p.m.
At the front desk, we ran into Arthur Milnes, a Jimmy Carter biographer. He had been to Plains 20 times for Carter’s lessons. He seemed to know the innkeeper well.
Carter wrote 32 books in his lifetime. I’d just seen them at The Carter Center. But he also had a good number written about him. And though Milnes was Canadian, he was Carter’s biggest fan.
We soon found ourselves in a discussion with Milnes in the hotel parking lot — again, our second choice — and three hours later he was inviting us to his room for wine. He said he assumed Jimmy Carter had my phone number, that he knew we were there.
“Plains only has 500 citizens,” Milnes reminded us. “I bet he’ll invite you to dinner.”
He’d also told us he’d been on the phone withThe New York Timesthat day and he’d met several other U.S. presidents. Some had planted trees in his backyard.
We weren’t in Kansas anymore.
Jimmy Carter’s boyhood home in Georgia.Courtesy of Laura Carney
Plains and Archery, where Carter grew up, are small towns. But it was just this experience that likely established the love of people that brought him to the White House.
And to 35 Sunday school lessons a year, for 40 years.
By the time we arrived at Maranatha Baptist Church on Sunday, Aug. 27, 2017, most people had told me “talk with the president” was the most impossible task my dad dreamt up. But my dad wasn’t just a dreamer. He was resourceful. Mick Carney would have known that when it came to this president, “impossible” was open to interpretation.
Jimmy Carter at Sunday School on Aug. 27, 2017“The point to be made today is that what decisions we’ve made up till now are really not what will shape our lives. It’s what decisions we make from now until the end of our life. This morning it’s a troubling thing for every one of us to decide, from now on, this is the kind of person I want to be. … And every one of us has a partner who loves us, and puts our interests first, and who knows everything and can do anything. And we have constant access to God.”
Jimmy Carter at Sunday School on Aug. 27, 2017
“The point to be made today is that what decisions we’ve made up till now are really not what will shape our lives. It’s what decisions we make from now until the end of our life. This morning it’s a troubling thing for every one of us to decide, from now on, this is the kind of person I want to be. … And every one of us has a partner who loves us, and puts our interests first, and who knows everything and can do anything. And we have constant access to God.”
Afterward, we posed for a photo with Mr. Carter, but I also got to shake his hand — which likely shook more hands than any other president’s. His hand was larger and softer than I’d imagined.
“Sir, my father wrote on his bucket list that he hoped to meet you, and I’m here to check that off for him today,” I blurted out.
“Oh,” President Carter said. “Very good!”
I told him how we had met his biographer Arthur Milnes at the hotel, and that Art was wonderful.
“Come back down and see us again,” President Carter said.
Jimmy Carter’s handwritten response to Laura Carney’s thank-you note after their meeting.Courtesy of Laura Carney
Today, seven years later, we are still friends with Carter biographer Arthur Milnes. I’ve gone to visit him in Canada (a trip in which he tried to introduce me to President Bill Clinton!), and my husband and I call him “Uncle Art.”
Art helped me write a letter to the pope, when it was time to check that off my dad’s list (my dad didn’t just want to write to the pope, he wanted to “correspond” with him — I received a letter back!).
Art helped me when I was ready to pitch my book idea, about completing my dad’s list, to agents. He helped me when I needed someone to blurb my book, once it was published. He helped me when I was asked to discuss the book on NPR, as Jimmy Carter had once done. And like his hero, the 39th president, Art was just a phone call away throughout my book tour.
President Carter held true to his word. I did see him again. At his book signing in New York, a year later. And he responded to my thank-you note from the first meeting, and again when I sent my published book — despite being on hospice.
Laura Carney at a Jimmy Carter book signing in New York City.Courtesy of Laura Carney
Jimmy Carter exemplified the idea of shaping one’s own life. It was a life my father also got to live, because he was brave enough to write down his dreams.
As I ponder what the future holds for our country, one with “inherent greatness,” as Carter wrote in his first book,Why Not the Best?, I think about the advice he gave in his Nobel Peace Prize speech: “The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice.”
Who might have an origin as common as a peanut farm in Georgia.
Laura Carney is the best-selling author ofMy Father’s List, available wherever books are sold.
source: people.com
