Essay Two in a series of Essays to Celebrate the 100th Birthday of American’s greatest living modern President!

In the early morning hours of August 2015, volunteers of the Jimmy Carter National Historic site began placing signs throughout the historic district which read “Jimmy Carter for Cancer Survivor.”

Just the day before the former President and lifelong resident of Plains Georgia had shocked the world revealing that he had cancer. He was 90 year old, was given just a few weeks to live, and cancer had already claimed his father, mother, sisters, and brother. Many didn’t expect him to survive. But Plains did. As it always had; Plains believed in Jimmy Carter and kept the faith with him.

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They were on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the 1976 election and their favorite son’s election to the Presidency. But, instead of reflection or resignation, the community of Plains and Jimmy Carter had one last improvable race left. In the months to come Carter would defeat cancer, Plains would once again be thrown into the national spotlight, and for one last time the entire world would marvel at the determination of this tiny hamlet in south Georgia.

There is a historical pull to this place and it’s become manifested in the tiny green and white painted train depot at the center of town. For many this humble structure has always held such a romantic attachment. This was where Jimmy Carter pulled it off.  Where he, along with his neighbors and family staged the most improbable and captivating Presidential campaign in history, forever changing the political landscape of the nation and how we pick our presidential nominees.

Once you enter the depot, long devoid of frequent activity, a single video can be heard echoing throughout the building. It is the Carter 1976 election campaign commercial  “Jimmy Who”. The images are aged now and the voices heard are those that used to fill the television screens in countless homes decades earlier. The nightly news anchors of the past; Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, and John Chancellor, can be heard.  The desired effect is easily achieved, transporting visitors back to a time when this depot was packed with locals and campaign workers and primary nights would turn into local vigils and tailgate festivals, as several TVs were installed to witness the results of so many past contests when their favorite son was trying to achieve the impossible.

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The town’s train depot was constructed in 1888 and was, for a time, the only building with a public bathroom. This was the primary reason for its selection as the hometown headquarters for the Carter Presidential campaign. It was the site of numerous hometown primary parties and was where candidate Carter would hold interviews whenever in town.  As the 1970s dawned, Plains remained largely unchanged. But, following his announcement for president, the entire landscape of the community began to change. The primary night parties would begin at the depot and quickly took on a church potluck atmosphere. There were said to have been rows of flatbed trucks everywhere and tiny campers.

The election of 1976 would transform the community of Plains forever, it would radicalize the social norms of the American experience, and would transcend Jimmy Carter from a born again politician into one of the most beloved Americans who ever lived.

It was often proclaimed throughout the 1976 election that “The strength of one man can be measured by the path he takes to travel there.” In the life of our nation’s 39th president, all roads, no matter how elevated, seem connected to one small hamlet in Southern Georgia. No town has ever been so rooted in the life and success of a president.

Jimmy Carter has become known as the man from Plains. And indeed he was.  But, his boyhood farm actually lies just outside of Plains Ga in neighboring rural Archery. Carter was our first President to be born in a Hospital, Plain’s Wise Sanitarium, in which his mother served as a registered nurse. His parents James Earl Carter Sr. and Lillian Carter had only been married a year when they welcomed their first born son. By the time his son Jimmy was four years old, Carter had purchased a new home. When he took the children to see the house, he realized that he had left his key behind. A wooden bar allowed only a small space for the windows to open, too small to allow access for an adult. Carter sent Jimmy through the window to open the door.

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When Carter did eventually move back to neighboring Plains it was to take over his father’s place as one of the major citizens of the community following the latter’s sudden death. He had been gone as a naval officer for years, he had become far more liberal and empathetic than most of his contemporaries and relations were sometimes fractured during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.

Yet, each time Carter ran for public office nearly the entire community would quickly rush to his aid and assist him in his bids. When he did run for the Democratic Nomination in 1976, it was estimated that nearly 90 percent of the community did, something, to help get him elected. From flying to a primary state to working a shift at the campaign headquarters. Everyone played a part and it was perhaps one of the last examples of mutual/communal aid in National politics.

Even today, with the President approaching the end of his extraordinary American Experience, there is still a mysterious and magnetic pull to this tiny Hamlet in South Georgia which is hard to explain. It can only be experienced and it continues to be visited each year by nearly a hundred thousand tourists. They all come for different reasons and purposes. Many come with their children until the past few years to hear President Carter’s Sunday school lessons, so that they can one day tell their children that they saw an American President.  Still many come with a silent longing for simpler times and to experience the rural lifestyle of Carter’s boyhood. So for these reasons and many more, Plains remains America’s hometown.

So when he needed them all one last time when he was battling cancer, the community treated it like one last Campaign. The spirit of 76 was felt just one last time. Its been ten years now and many of the former campaign volunteers have since gone to their great reward. All the old voices of those wonderful and joyful primary nights have quickly faded into the past.  

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Yet Plains is still much as it was and for the moment its star attraction is still with us. The stage has become minimized and the spotlight has now been replaced with a modest reading light. Carter and Plains are now what they always attempted to be; a balm for troubled times. A bridge between our past and the future we must work tirelessly to achieve.

Carter in many ways is really the historian of his family. His is the last voice of this truly extraordinary American family to go out. He’s one of the last of the Plains community from this era, and he has explored, catalogued, and dictated all of his experiences from this period. What did these moments mean to him? This exposure to politics, his father’s involvement in local politics? He keeps going back to his boyhood, its the start of most of his books. It’s the birth of the man who would be President, and Plains as a community developed alongside him.

History is not was, but is. We are a communal nation, we are a nation that attempts to awaken the ghosts of our Present. Why? What are we trying to awaken? We take photographs, seek out video or film, we add narration, music, pan zooms to our past, mixing it all together, in an attempt to reanimate our past and create a narrative that makes sense. To capture it and relive it. To define a changing landscape, a catalog of our experiences. What difference is there from an old man who shares his boyhood in southern Georgia, or an equally elderly woman who shares her medical expertise in India, or a man who creates a character of himself. That is what we have American myths for, that is what we have National Parks for. It is this concept, this mission statement that has become the life’s blood of Plains. They are in the business of celebrating and honoring the past. But, it has never been its Heartbeat.

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It’s always been about them, all of them, anyone lucky enough to call this small corner of the world home. It all begins with a simple proposition they are Plains, part of the same community, they need each other. Never write each other off, never give up on one another. Bond of loyalty before all else.

That’s the rhythm of Plains. You can be as neurotic or bullheaded as you want.  You can be as eccentric, flaky, verbose, sarcastic, or loud.  We agree we’re imperfect. In Plains you can do virtually anything except go it alone.