by guest contributor Kandie Stroud
Photos: Creative Commons
“A few weeks ago, on December 29, 2024 at 100 years of age, Jimmy went home to join Rosalynn. They never did like being apart.
It was a blessing to have been given the opportunity to write a book about Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign which allowed me to spend a lot of time in Plains getting to know and interview Jimmy and Rosalynn and the Carter family and to travel with them on the campaign trail. While at first I did not see him as a towering political figure who would become the 39 th president of the United States and later be revered as a world class humanitarian in his post-presidency. But I came to know Carter as an extraordinarily kind, gentle and generous human being, a man of authenticity, integrity, brilliance, wisdom and above all, faith.
It was a process getting to that point. In the early 70’s when Carter was considering a run for the White House, a family friend and Carter advisor, Dr Peter Bourne, was trying to burnish Carter’s image and to convince me to write about him. He maintained that Carter was a new breed of Southern Governor, a progressive who could return the South to the Democrat column and he painted a bright future with Carter as Commander in Chief. He insisted I meet him. At Bourne’s constant pestering and my editor’s acquiescence, I flew to Atlanta for an afternoon reception at the Governor’s mansion where I met Jimmy and Rosalynn as they were greeting guests in a receiving line. Very warm, delightful people. Lots of Southern hospitality. But nothing suggested superstar. There was no pizzaz, no sizzle, no Jack Kennedy and Jackie O aura. Bourne was unrelenting, certain I had missed Carter’s superstar quality. Let’s try again. Two weeks later Carter was going to be in Washington at the Democratic Governors Association meeting. He would arrange for an interview. I met Carter in the lobby of the Washington Hilton, spent close to an hour with him and wrote an article. He was interesting. Sort of. But Carter did not electrify the space he occupied.
On December 12, 1974 Carter announced he was running for president. He was given zero percent chance. “Jimmy Who?,” was the mantra. At the National Press Club where he held his press conference most reporters wrote off the prospect of this unknown candidate from the deep south making it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As the presidential campaign loomed, over a dozen candidates including, President Ford, Alabama Governor George Wallace, and Rep. Mo Udall (D-AZ) were declaring. I received a call from a literary agent in New York named Bill Adler who had been following my work. Adler came to Washington to see me and over lunch at the Willard Hotel across the street from the White House, asked if I would consider doing a book on the campaign. The publishing house William Morrow wanted the book. I accepted the challenge and shortly thereafter was off on the campaign trail, assigned to cover all of the candidates.
Photo credit: Courtesy of The Washington Times
I had known and liked Gerald Ford as an approachable politician when he was the Representative from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Midwesterners are known for their warm and welcoming nature. They smile easily and go out of their way to help someone in need. The Michigander was no exception. At the Republican National Convention in Miami for instance. I had a broken leg from a ski accident and was encased in a hip- to- toe plaster cast hobbling around on crutches. Ford and his wife Betty saw me waiting for a taxi outside of my hotel and insisted on driving me in their limousine to an event that they were also attending. Ford had been in the House for nearly 25 years, nine of them as Minority Leader. He was selected as Nixon’s Vice President when Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace, and then stepped in as president when Nixon himself resigned. With his experience and likeability, I expected Ford, the incumbent, would probably win. Wrong. The campaign was conducted in the aftermath of the Vietnam war and the Watergate scandal. The public was demoralized and the scent of corruption was in the air. Lies, lies and more lies was the perception on which Carter capitalized. ‘I’ll never lie to you,’ was his slogan and his humble outsider image was just what the public craved. I attended Ford’s events and rallies as well as all the others. They were all good on the stump and were experienced politicians but none of them exuded that movie star leading man glow.
White House Photograph Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Library. David Hume Kennerly
I spent some time on Ronald Reagan’s campaign bus where I interviewed him but found him disingenuous. An actor playing a part. Senator Henry “Scoop Jackson” from the state of Washington, was a cold war liberal and anti-Communist member of the Democratic Party, but every time I covered his events all that came to mind was that he was the embodiment of eminence grise, ie, grey from head to toe—grey hair, grey suit, grey personality. Rep. Morris “Mo” Udall (D-AZ) served in the House for more than thirty years. He was authentic, a real mensch, great to cover, tall and hilariously funny, but in the end didn’t have the heft to carry the day. Wallace, the 45 th and longest serving Governor of Alabama, was a hideous segregationist (“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”) who could never make it in the Northern states because of his bigoted views. So, Ford, being the incumbent and a good, decent man without many enemies seemed like the reasonable choice. I underestimated voters’ distrust of post-Watergate politics.
Carter was still not coming across as the man of the hour. Yet, little by little, as the campaign progressed, I found his common man aura, his disdain form pomp and ceremony, his humility and his strong moral core compelling. Carter was different. He was not your typical pol. He was an outsider with an interesting story. Like Andrew Young said at Jimmy’s funeral, ‘How could someone from Plains get to be president.?’ Jimmy had grown up dirt poor without running water or electricity and did grueling manual labor on his father’s peanut farm, rising before dawn to the ringing of the farm bell. But those years of toiling with his fellow farm hands translated into his being able to relate easily to the average voter. He had also worked side by side in the fields with blacks, planting and cultivating crops and singing Gospel songs with them, which built a solid relationship with that community. He intuitively knew how to relate to their culture. And although he was highly educated and a nuclear physicist, in spite of his brilliance and the fact that he was rising through the ranks of the nuclear sub world under the tutelage of Admiral Hyman Rickover, he was an approachable ‘Everyman’ who smiled easily, carried his own bags, liked rock music and wore grandfather cardigan sweaters and jeans. He was also a loving husband and father. I admired the intense love he shared with his wife Rosalynn during their 77 years of marriage. The love was palpable. Jimmy, whose mother, a nurse, actually delivered Rosalynn, knew he wanted to marry her after their first date. Rosalynn went on to run Jimmy’s businesses when he got involved in politics at the local level and he relied on her for everything. They spoke several times a day. Their affection for each other whether in public or in private was the same. They were a couple in love. It was endearing. Audiences were responding to the whole package. I was too. And I came to respect, revere and love Jimmy Carter.
Photo by Carol M. Highsmith. Courtesy of The Library of Congress
My first trip to Plains convinced me even more that Carter was the candidate to watch. I had taken Brooke, my seven-year old daughter, along so she could experience a touch of the campaign trail in a small and contained environment. The day we flew to Atlanta and drove to Plains, by some quirk of fate, she sat next to Jimmy Carter who was traveling in coach. Jimmy not only helped Brooke with her homework, he sent his aide, Greg Schneiders back to my seat to tell me she had eaten all her dinner. He also drew cartoons for her in her notebook. One cartoon was a Model T Ford careening over a cliff and hurtling down a mountainside; obviously, are reference to his opponent- Gerald Ford. (Today that picture is framed and hanging on her office wall. I showed it to Jimmy recently when I spent the afternoon with him and Rosalynn at their home in Plains. Carter was gob smacked that his drawing still existed and genuinely touched that I brought it for show and tell.)
As we stepped off the plane in Atlanta, Carter invited his little seat mate to spend the night at his home in Plains with his daughter, Amy. What candidate can you think of who invited your kid for an overnight in the middle of a presidential campaign? But Carter was not your average pol. He didn’t stand on ceremony or social class. He was real. When I dropped her off for the sleep- over it was obvious that the Carters had always lived humbly. In spite of being one of the leading families of Plains, and Jimmy serving as the Governor of Georgia, they still lived in the one- story brick ranch-style house, which they had built in 1961 in the early days of their marriage. No frills, no gates, no fancy landscaping. Just an average home. It was valued at $167,000. While I was off reporting, Brooke and Amy, under Rosalynn’s supervision, set up a lemonade stand and sold drinks in front of Carter’s house. The next day I took the girls roller skating. Amy took along her pet caterpillars in a little cough drop box. She would swoop around the roller rink at 80 mph, crashing into the sideboards every few rounds to pet the little creatures.
Plains, population 600, looked like a set for High Noon. A water tower loomed over the entire town. Main Street was the length of about half a NYC block long with a roof covering the sidewalk. There were no more than a handful of stores and they all had pull-up parking. The train depot sat across the street. One store housed Uncle Hugh’s worm farm which Hugh Carter ran out of the rear of his antique store. The Carters were out of central casting. Carter’s sister Gloria rode around town on a motorcycle. His other sister, Ruth, was an evangelist. Brother Billy was a good ol’ boy who ran the gas station across the street, sold Billy Beer and drank a lot of it. Carter’s mom was a nurse. Miz Lillian, who had joined the Peace Corps at the age of 68 and took care of patients with leprosy in India, lived just outside of Plains in a Pond House. Seventy-eight when her son ran for president, she was in town every day working on the campaign. Carter’s son Chip and his wife lived in a trailer three blocks from town where he watched a lot of television and ate a lot of candy both of which had been banned by Jimmy when Chip was a boy if his grades dropped, which was often. The Baptist church where Jimmy taught Sunday school class to a group of men at the Baptist church every week looked like the front of a Christmas card. This colorful story trumped anything I had seen on the campaign trail. I called my publisher from a pay phone in Plains and asked if they would roll the dice and let me change the focus from a comprehensive campaign book to one focused on Carter, this story book town and this unusual cast of characters. I also strongly believed that Carter was going to be elected. They took the gamble and we ended up with a win-win. They got the first campaign book to hit the stands. I nailed the election and also got a best seller — an inside look at the life of a presidential candidate and future Commander in Chief.
Miz Lillian – Courtesy of Alamy.com
At that time I hosted of a weekly segment on NBC-4 in Washington called Lifestyle. NBC sent a film crew with me to Plains to do a series on the Carter family. I filmed Gloria zipping around on her Harley, talked to Ruth about how to pray, taped Miz Lillian reminiscing about how she raised Jimmy to be honest “with a little whippin’ and a swtchin’.” We were having trouble, however, getting interview time with Jimmy and Rosalynn. Jody Powell, Carter’s press secretary was an immutable roadblock. He simply would not give us a time or a day for an interview. I faced the prospect of having to return to DC minus a Carter interview in the can. On my last day of that trip to Plains, Gloria invited me to stop by for a lunch of juicy red tomatoes and succulent corn on the cob from her farm. When I told her about the Jody Powell predicament, Gloria rolled her>eyes, picked up the phone and told Jimmy that I wanted to interview him. ‘Sure. Tell her tocome right over,’ said Carter. Problem solved.
Photo courtesy of Yahoo!
On another trip to Plains Jimmy asked me to come hear him preach at his Sunday School class. I was the only woman ever invited. Maybe Carter sensed that I too was a person of prayer. I don’t know. I never asked. But I was very impressed with what I witnessed. Carter had just finished a grueling week on the campaign trail. I suspected he might not even show up. But at 10am as I was walking up the stairs to the room where he would preach, he came charging in behind me, bounding up the stairs with his bible tucked under his arm. He said he’d been up since 6:00 am preparing. Introducing me to his class of twelve men (how Pentecostal) he said, ‘This is the first time we have ever had a reporter or a woman in this class. We’ve never even had a black.’ The men laughed. I cringed. Standing behind a round table in the stark white room he began: ‘The main point I want to leave with you today is that we should lead our lives with the Holy Spirit within us and be ready to face Our Saviour. We should leave here today and live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.’ That class revealed the true essence of Jimmy Carter: Man of the Gospel and as President Biden pointed out at the funeral, a man of character. I was touched by his deep spirituality and extensive knowledge of the Bible. This was no political act. For me, observing him in that class was a pivotal moment. It revealed the depth of Carter’s faith and it infused his entire life, whether as a farmer, father, candidate, president or during his post-presidency when he devoted himself to human rights, building homes for the disadvantaged for 35 years and missions of peace around the world. I came to have a whole new appreciation for the man.
Courtesy of Post-Gazette.com
Another surprising fact I learned about Carter was his woodworking skills. John and Betty Pope, (John was Carter’s best friend and Betty was his cousin) took me to visit the Carter’s tiny two-bedroom mountain cabin in the town of Ellijay, situated next to a rushing stream and waterfall in North Georgia. It was Jimmy’s happy place where he would get away to think, fly fish, write his 33 books and, who knew, make furniture. Everything in the cabin was literally handmade by Carter, including the four-poster bed he and Rosalynn slept in, the two armoires where they kept their clothes, the round dining room table, 6 chairs, and a Lazy Susan carved out of single piece of wood. Every piece was flawlessly crafted and polished to perfection. Carter never used a single nail. He fashioned his own wooden nails to assemble the furniture.
Jody Powell, membre de l’équipe de campagne de Jimmy Carter, en août 1976, Etats-Unis. (Photo by Bernard CHARLON/Gamma-Rapho. Courtesy of Getty Images)
During the campaign I often traveled with Carter’s staff. Jody Powell, the press secretary was a sharp tongued, chain smoking, narrow eyed blonde man with an arrogance that did not match his lack of talent. Pat Cadell, the pollster, looked like an unmade bed but at least was good at his craft. Jerry Rafshoon, Carter’s media expert, put Carter on the map with his commercials. A Brooklyn born son of an Air Force policeman, Rafshoon was not a particularly cheerful man but he knew a bad commercial when he heard one. Carter’s commercial was a jingle that went, “Jimmy Carter is his name. Jimmy Carter is his name.” Rafshoon said at the time, ‘no one knew who the hell Jimmy Carter was anyway so what good was it singing ‘Jimmy Carter is his name?’ Rafshoon convinced Carter to let him do a kind of cinema verité, to follow him around the state, show him in action and have the announcer say, “Jimmy Carter. They say he can’t win. You’re the only person who can decide. Meet him. Talk to him If you like what you see, vote for him.’ Carter’s team didn’t like the idea but Jimmy did. ‘Go ahead and do it,’he told Rafshoon.
Stu Eizenstat, who came to be Carter’s domestic policy advisor, was a Harvard Law grad with a Phi Beta Cappa key from UNC. He had gravitas and authenticity and was more polished than Powell and Cadell and went on to become Carter’s domestic policy advisor. I liked him. He spoke at the funeral today. He called Carter ‘A man of steel with an unshakeable sense of right and wrong who brought integrity to the White House.’ He said Carter was a renaissance man: a painter, a poet, an author, a Sunday School teacher, a carpenter…a champion of civil rights from the Deep South.’ I also liked Hamilton Jordon (pronounced Jer-den). Jordan, was dark- haired, good looking, Carter’s key advisor and strategist and went on to become White House Chief of Staff. Jordan was a Georgia boy. Grew up in Albany, the next town over from Plains, went to University of Georgia and at age of 26 ran Carter’s gubernatorial election. Jordan masterminded Carter’s presidential campaign to a fare thee well at least two years in advance. The Jordan “game plan” was honed, polished and ready for Carter to burst out of the gate as soon as he was done with his gubernatorial duties. The idea was to start with a clean slate, no work responsibilities, whereas the other candidates were tied down by the presidency, a governorship and House and Senate seats. Second Carter would begin sooner than anyone else to get a jump start on the race. Third, he prioritized Iowa; he spent more time there than any other candidate. The idea was to saturate the state with all things Carter so that none of the others could catch up to his lead. Once he emerged the winner of the Iowa caucuses the momentum would propel him to victory in New Hampshire primary. He would be perceived as front runner and leapfrog from there. The plan worked.
Courtesy of MSN.com
At the end of the 1976 race when the returns were in, it was clear that Carter’s “Southern Strategy” had paid off. The Solid South (except Virginia) had returned to the Democratic column for the first time since 1960. Carter was the first president elected from the Deep South since Zachary Taylor in 1848. Carter also won the border states (except Oklahoma) and most of the northeast. Ford took the western half of the U.S. except Hawaii. Carter had about a two million- vote edge (50 percent to 48 percent) and an electoral vote victory of 297 to 240. On election night once we knew Carter had won, we flew to Atlanta where he gave his victory speech to adoring crowds. In the wee hours of the morning we flew to Plains where Jimmy held a rally at the train depot across the street from Uncle Hugh’s worm farm. Ms. Lillian was there to cheer her son’s victory along with a few hundred others. ‘The only reason it was so close was that the candidate wasn’t good enough as a campaigner,’ said Carter.’But I’ll make up for that as president.’
It must have been 3:00 am when we boarded the campaign plane for the trip back to DC. The exhausted reporters were all talking about finally reaching the end of the punishing campaign trail and were looking forward to their upcoming vacations in warm sunny destinations. I was going home to start writing How Jimmy Won. Sitting next to Cadell on the plane I asked him if the Carter team was looking forward to life in the nation’s capital. No indeed. In fact, I got an earful about how they were NOT going to be a part of phony baloney elite life of Washington. And they were not going to be buttering up the scions of society and the lions of Capitol Hill. No siree. Not a Carter thing. I knew then and there this might not end well. Their disdain for the establishment hurt the Carter presidency immeasurably. Carter thought his wearing of cardigan grandfather sweaters and eschewing walking into the East Room to Hail to the Chief, banishing alcohol in the White House, carrying his own bag, installing solar panels on the White House and telling the public to turn down their thermostats to 67 degrees to save energy would win the day. Turns out the public didn’t like being cold in their homes and were more concerned with 14% interest rates, long lines at the gas pumps and soaring inflation than having a folksy president who never lied to them. The glow began to wane.
Courtesy of CNN
During the Carter years I was assigned to cover the State Department for CNN as Chief Diplomatic Correspondent. My bureau chief, George Watson, a Georgetown neighbor and friend, thought that since I had just given birth to my third child, State would be an easy beat for a new mother and would allow plenty of time with the baby. ‘You can cover the daily briefing at noon, do a package for the evening news and probably be home by 4:00pm.”’Not so much. Remember the Iranian hostage crisis? One weekend we arrived at our beach home in Delaware for a couple of relaxing days walking the beach and playing games on the boardwalk with the kids. We had no sooner arrived and unpacked that Cissy Baker, CNN’s assignment editor called. ‘We need you to go live tomorrow morning for the first feed at 6:00 am. We want you there at 4:30 am.’ Iranian students had just seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and were holding 55 Americans hostage. So much for the relaxing weekend. We jumped back in the car and drove 4 hours back to DC. Starting the next morning until the hostages were released over a year later, I was at State every morning at 4:30 am, reporting live every hour on the situation, often until 8 pm. Carter used all his skills to get them rescued and released. I always felt Carter was sabotaged when it came to both. The rescue mission ended in disaster when the military helicopters that had been sent to spirit the hostages to safety crashed in the desert. Many of our soldiers died. One reason, among others, was that no one had installed sand screens on the choppers, so the desert got sucked up into the engines and they became disabled. What secret military mission does not cross every t and dot every i when it comes to checking equipment? The fiasco seemed suspicious. Carter had also negotiated the hostages’ release. At one point in 1979 it looked like it was happening. I remember it well. My husband Frank and I were packed to depart the next morning on a trip to Singapore and Hong Kong for our anniversary but the CNN assignment desk called and said not to leave because the hostages were coming home. It never happened. It turned out George Schultz, a diplomat, economist and businessman who became Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, had been holding secret meetings with the Iranians in Paris and convinced them not to let the hostages out during Carter’s presidency, but to wait until Reagan became president. That pretty much killed Carter’s chances of reelection. The hostages were released, as Jimmy said, ‘five minutes after I left office.’
Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin
The times I spent at the Carter White House were meaningful. I was there for the signing of the peace deal Carter negotiated accomplished during 12 days of secret negotiations at Camp David between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli president Menachem Begin. I’m told the “secret sauce,” to the success of this mission was peach pie. Carter, who refused to let the men leave until a deal was reached, softened their incarceration by having his chef make peach pie for them. The two leaders loved it so much they ate it every day and a peace deal, probably the crowning accomplishment of his presidency, was reached.
One unforgettable experience was being invited to see the Pope at the White House. I had just written a front-page New York Times Magazine Article on Rosalynn Carter which the White House must have looked on favorably because they invited me to attend Pope John Paul II’s visit to the White House. It was the day of our new baby’s baptism and we had family and friends coming from around the country for the ceremony and for dinner at our house. My husband insisted I attend the White House thing for the Pope and said to ‘just take the baby’ with me since I was nursing. It was the first time a Pope had ever visited the White House. I thoughtabout how opposed Southern Baptists were in 1960 to the election of John F Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, because they feared he would be too heavily influenced by the Pope in Rome. Now,here was a Pope on the White House lawn, at the invitation of a Southern Baptist president addressing a crowd of 1000 and praising Jimmy Carter’s ‘deep Christian faith.’ When he finished speaking, the Pope unexpectedly decided to walk through the crowd on the lawn. I was standing at the press stand next to our CNN camera holding Drew. When Carter saw me he saidto the Pontiff, ‘Your Holiness, there’s a baby.’ With that, the Pope’s advance man, a Cardinal, scooped up the baby from my arms and handed him to the pontiff who held him gently and kissed the him. Every camera recorded the moment. It made the front pages of papers around the world and all the television news shows. Our priest from Holy Trinity in Georgetown who was doing Drew’s baptism service later that day was a bit outdone to say the least. How do you baptize a child who has already been baptized by the Pope. I’ve often joked that in spite of the papal blessing that baby has been a devil ever since. In fact, he actually is a devil. A Blue Devil, that is. Drew played Lacrosse for Duke for four years.
One of my favorite memories was talking to Carter about music. Jimmy had a life-long love of music and saw music as a moral force which could heal America after an era of division and scandal. He thought of music as better than legislation or speech making and said it could inspire unity and reconciliation. I agreed with him. I’m a singer who’s been performing with asymphonic chorus, The Choral Arts Society of Washington, around the world on major concert stages with conductors like Rostropovich who called music ‘the universal language,’ and at the Kennedy Center every year since it opened, we have sung all the great classical composers: Verdi, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Mozart, Schubert and hundreds more. Carter told me that he loved country music, but that when he was working alone in the Oval office he listened to Mozart because classical music has brain-boosting effects, that it stimulates the brain’s cognitive processes and improves mental processing speed. He said it helped him think clearer and perform better. But he told the world that he listened to Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan and he became known as the Rock and Roll president because that helped him identify with the majority of voters. He became friends with the Allman Brothers band, Lynryd Skynyrd, John Denver and Johnny Cash and invited them all to the White House. I went to a few of the Carters’ Country Music Days on the White House lawn and listened to Willie Nelson and other great singers perform while we ate barbeque at picnic tables while Jimmy and Rosalynn walked around in denim and made everyone feel at home like they were at a private party. Thursday at his funeral in the National Cathedral we heard country legend Garth Brooks and Tricia Yearwood perform John Lennon’s “Imagine” which goes, “Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too. Imagine all the people livin’ life in peace.” But there was classical music too. There was Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major, Edward Elgar’s Andante espressivo from Organ Sonata, Op. 28, Grieg and Copland and Samuel Barber and the Armed Forces Chorus with the Marines’ Chamber Orchestra Chorus with the Cathedral Boys Choir sang the lovely “Be Still My Soul,” set to the music of Sibelius. As they sang, a tiny red, >blue, yellow and green rainbow suddenly appeared and glowed on a section of the arch over the nave. It was as though Jimmy was saying, ‘I’m at peace.’
I didn’t see Carter for a long time after he left the White House and retired to Plains, mostly because he was globe-trotting to some of the most remote places on the planet fighting disease and poverty, peace missions, monitoring elections, negotiating with despots, building houses with Rosalynn for Habitat for Humanity or his thirty-three writing books. It was in 2000 when I attended my 20 th CNN reunion in Atlanta at the Omni hotel. Jimmy was invited to speak. As he was being escorted through an adoring crowd, including throngs of CNN reporters and anchors past and present, everyone was pressing around him to try to get a little face time or a quote, but when Carter spotted me he pushed them aside, stopping for a hug and a few moments of quiet conversation while other looked on. The next time I saw him was the last time. It was 2020 and I was in Atlanta for a DNC Meeting. I arranged to take a day to go and visit them. I rented a car and, under a bright blue Georgia sky, drove two and a half hours to Plains. As I pulled into town it was as though time had stood still since I left forty-four years ago. The water tower, train depot and Main Street were all the same except Hugh Carter’s Worm Farm was now a souvenir store selling peanut themed items and Jimmy and Rosalynn’s home on Woodland Drive now had a Guard House. The Secret Service waved me through immediately and as I pulled into the driveway there was Jimmy, standing on the path to this house wearing jeans and a navy fleece with both arms outstretched in welcome. I was so excited to see him I jumped out of the car before it was fully shifted into park. The car started to roll back down the driveway. ‘Hold on Mr. President,’ I shouted before I ran to his waiting embrace, both of us laughing hysterically. I spent the rest of the day in the Carter’s living room with Jimmy and Rosalynn. It was as though no time had elapsed. We sat in front of the fireplace where I had interviewed them decades ago and talked for hours about everything from our children and their successes, to the world today– which worried them greatly.
We talked about their transition to Plains after the glitter of the White House, which they said was so comfortable to return to. We spoke of the 2020 election- surprisingly, Jimmy said his candidate was Senator Bernie Sanders, mine was Hillary. He said he was done writing books and he and Rosalynn laughed at how the one they wrote together almost caused an end to their marriage. ‘We had such different work styles,’ said Rosalynn. ‘I would work so long and hard on my chapters until they were perfect, but Jimmy would do his in an afternoon. And I didn’t want him touching mine. We started writing each other mean notes.’ But their 77- year marriage was solid said Jimmy because they both had always their own interests and because they shared a strong faith. They both read the same bible passages every night. We spoke of Jimmy’s close brush with death from cancer in 1991 and how he was ok now thanks to immunotherapy, but he said at 95 he knew he would soon face it again in the not -too distant- future. But he had no anxiety or fear. He said his deep faith was his “light house” guiding his way there. And he knew heaven awaited him. At the end of our visit Jimmy said he was sorry to say goodbye but he wanted to go and visit a friend whose wife had just died. Rosalynn and I chatted on the front stoop for a while. Although she was 93, she was still spiffy in a lime green blouse, black slacks and black pumps, her hair neatly quaffed and her energy high. She talked about how thrilled they cancer. “But after we had gotten the good news were driving back to Plains when we got a call from his doctors. They said they had bad news. The scans we just did showed the cancer had spread to his liver. That was one of the most upsetting moments of our lives. We cried the rest of the way home. But we were lucky and the surgery they did to remove the tumor from his liver saved him. He went right back to teaching Sunday school and working for Habitat.” Rosalynn said she had suffered from a breast cancer scare in 1977 and although she had a few health issues now, she said she basically was in good health. As I drove away, I knew this was the last time I would see them and I am so happy I made the trip and saw them in good shape and great spirits.Three years later the vibrant Rosalynn was diagnosed with dementia. On November 19 th , 2023 at the age of 96, after a few days of hospice care, Rosalynn died at home with Jimmy by her side. ‘Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,’ Jimmy said in a statement after her passing. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.’ ”
