In Jimmy Carter’s hometown of Plains, people remember the former president

PLAINS, Ga. — By late Monday morning, flags were at half-staff in this small downtown and the decorations were coming down—early.

“This next week was gonna be our packing up Christmas,” said Jillian Williams, a fixture of the business community in this strip of shops by the railroad tracks where holly boughs and bows were replaced with red white and blue ribbons.

Former President Jimmy Carter died at the age of 100 Sunday just a short walk from here. His life began just down the road, in the town of Archer.

But it was here in Plains that the peanut farmer and Navy veteran launched his political career. He became the governor of Georgia in 1971 and, of course, was elected the 39th President of the United States in 1976.

He’s being remembered around the world for his time in office as well as his work after the presidency. Many saw him as an advocate for international peace, democracy and human rights.

In Plains, he was a neighbor.

At another corner of the downtown strip, Agnes McAllister slipped keys into the lock of the side door of the Plains Inn, the first step in getting ready for the days ahead. Her aim: to make a place where the Carter family would feel at home once funeral activities begin in earnest.

“Well, I know it’s going to be very busy here and I have to get everything ready upstairs because all the Carters will be staying upstairs,” McAllister said. “It makes me feel good that I’m able to do that for them.”

In the five or six years McAllister cleaned rooms at the Plains Inn she’s met people from across the world who come to this farming community to pay respect to Jimmy Carter.

“It’s been a blessing,” she said.

Others in this town of around 550 people went about their routine, like checking their mail at the small post office.

That included farm manager Tim Chavers. He said there was one time at Christmas when people here weren’t so happy with Jimmy Carter.

“Everywhere you see around here, there was tractors,” he said.

And farmers, up and down this same main drag in town in 1980.

“They were boycotting because he put an embargo on grain in Russia, or something or other,” Chavers remembered. “Everywhere you can see, all over Plains was just lines and lines of tractors.”

That was in protest of the grain embargo Carter authorized to try to stop Russia’s war against Afghanistan. It hit U.S. farmers’ bottom line. But Chavers said once Carter was out of office and back home, all was forgiven.

“He went to the White House, he come back and he came back a member of the community,” Chavers said “And you know, that’s the way it always was.”

“I mean, he was one of us. He was one of us.”

Like Carter, longtime city council member Eugene Edge, Sr. grew up farming peanuts in Plains, and like Carter, who led lessons at Marantha Baptist Church, Edge was also a Sunday school teacher.

“So one Sunday I took my son off and went to listen to him,” Edge recalled. “I wanted to see how good he was. And he was good.”

Why? Because he could quote Scripture.

“Anyone that can quote scripture good is a very good man, in my opinion,” Edge said. “He never quit doing what would help somebody. He never stopped working, really, until he got, you know, sick.”

After they heard about Carter’s death, Jay Landers and Pam Howell decided to stop in Plains on their way from New Orleans to Tallahassee, Fla.

“I met Jimmy Carter at one point and actually played a little tennis with him,” Landers said.

That was when Landers was a staffer for then-Florida Gov. Rubin Askew and when Carter was Georgia’s governor. So how was Carter as a tennis player?

“He was okay,” Landers said.

If Carter’s tennis skills didn’t impress Landers, much else about Carter did. Landers said he wishes he could say the same about political leaders today.

“What concerns me is there’s so few people of real integrity in government now,” Landers said. “And that’s what he embodied.”

Now Plains is getting ready to remember its most famous resident and lay him to rest next to Rosalynn, his hometown sweetheart for the ages.