Jimmy Carter was a man of the people

Defeated, Carter returned to Georgia, but found a greater victory in using his time, access, and status as a member of the American President’s Club to shine his light on projects and problems and people in need of a champion.

There is a saying among those who work for non-governmental organizations, also known as NGOs. It sounds like this: You don’t have to be in Washington, DC to be effective. But you’ll never be really effective if you don’t get outside of Washington, DC Jimmy Carter’s life proves it. He understood the concepts of proximity and power in a unique way.

For many ambitious people, achieving and keeping power is about being around those with influence, influence, resources or wealth.

Growing up with his hands in the dirt, James Earl Carter found ways to stay rooted in the Georgia soil of his youth even as he ascended to the highest heights of political power. His feet may have been under a desk in the Oval Office or on a tarmac in Africa or a summit in South America or behind a lectern on Capitol Hill, but the simple rhythms and solid traditions of rural Georgia seemed to occupy a kind of geography of Carter’s mind.

It shaped his decisions in office as governor and eventually as president. It was the compass that guided his life after the presidency. He left Georgia to live in Washington and travel the world – but Georgia never left him. The experiences in the deeply rural, mostly black village of Bueskydning (down the red-clay road from the Plains), where his family grew cotton, corn, sugar cane and, most famously, peanuts, were both a guide and a magnetic force field throughout his long life.

Raised in a house that didn’t get running water until he was 11 and electricity until he was 14, Carter was near poverty. To nature. For black people. (The Carters were the only white people in the village.) To a world where lines around race, class and gender were strongly drawn due to segregation and Dixie tradition. But these racial boundaries were also blurred around the edges because farming is a team sport where people who live close to the land depend on each other when the storms, the pests, the health of the livestock and the viability of the land itself are unpredictable.

All of this was reflected in the decisions Carter made in office. He set the standard for national disaster preparedness by creating the Federal Emergency Management Agency through executive order. He established the Ministry of Education and that Ministry of Energy and installed 32 thermal solar panels on the roof of the White House in 1979.

As governor of Georgia, he created unprecedented diversity in his appointments and appointments. Only three blacks served on Georgia state boards when he was elected governor. When he left, 40% of people in the state’s most influential positions were black. As president, he appointed a record number of women and people of color to the federal bench as part of the 262 lifetime judges he appointed during his term. The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg was among that number.

There are many things that are impressive about Jimmy Carter: 39th President. winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served with distinction in the Navy. Did graduate work in nuclear physics. Was a master carpenter. Authored nearly three dozen books.

But what I find most impressive about that glittering resume is that he made time to teach Sunday School year after year, even popping back to Georgia to teach when he lived in the White House. Yes, his persistence in teaching was a demonstration of his Baptist faith, but it also revealed his willingness to remain close to the people he served throughout his life.

There it is again. The importance of closeness even for a man elected to a position that placed him inside what amounts to a gilded cage. A president elected to serve the people is traditionally closed off from the public. The bubble is most tightly sealed when the president is serving a term, but even after leaving the White House, the cordon around the president is tight.

Jimmy Carter managed to break through it by traveling the world on various humanitarian projects by helping to build more than 4,400 homes volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, by driving his security detail crazy when he stopped to shake every hand on commercial Delta flights and by regularly imparting wisdom to his Sunday school students from the front of Maranatha Baptist Church. Videos show that he was more stooped and definitely grayer in later years, but until he couldn’t anymore, he still appeared when his schedule allowed.

“I have one life and one chance to make it count” Carter once said. “I’m free to choose anything. My faith requires me to do what I can, where I can, when I can, for as long as I can.”

Carter lived a life that was the embodiment of the idea of ​​lifting as you climb. He never forgot where he came from. After his final funeral ceremony in Washington on Thursday, he will make a final trip to Georgia, where he will forever be near the country of his youth, and also to Rosalynn Smith Carterthe love of his life.