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3 days ago
The signs, made by hand or machine, less than a meter squared or the size of a truck, were everywhere in this small town on Monday: “Thank you, Jimmy Carter.” “Home of Jimmy Carter.” And, left over from October: “Happy 100th birthday.”
Smiling portraits of the 39th president of the US were hanging around the town where he was born and raised – at city hall, in a restaurant.
Residents in the town of fewer than 600 going to work and running errands seemed unperturbed by the gaggle of TV news trucks gathered next to the railroad tracks that run through town, brought by news of Carter’s death on Sunday. They seemed accustomed to the attention that comes with being the home town of the longest-lived and, by many measures, most active former occupant of the White House.
All those who spoke to the Guardian had an anecdote on hand about the man they considered a neighbor, a “regular guy” who just happened to have helped eradicate guinea worm in Africa, won the Nobel peace prize and led a disastrous operation to free US hostages in Iran, among many other milestones.
Only a few minutes down US highway 280 from where Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, lived in town, Haley Beverly, 29, and her daughter, Rosemary, two, were picking up their mail shortly after noon. Beverly’s husband, Robert, has been the pastor at Plains Methodist church, next door to their house, for eight years.
“It’s the same church where Jimmy and Rosalynn were married,” Beverly volunteered. That was on 7 July 1946, and the couple stayed married for 77 years, until Rosalynn’s death in 2023. “We used to see them walking in front of our house, holding hands – and the black Escalade [of the Secret Service] following slowly behind,” she recalled. “Just like a pair of sweethearts, so down to earth.”
The repeated scene made an impact on Beverly. “We’re a young couple – to see a family built like that, in a pressure cooker like the presidency … that was a big inspiration for us,” she said.
Down the road toward the center of town, the Plains mayor, Joseph “Joey” Recker, was unlocking the door to city hall, covering for the city clerk while she was on her lunch break. Recker, elected in May after the previous mayor had been in office for 40 years, said he and Carter were “backdoor neighbors”, meaning “my house butts up to his property”.
Recker, who is 60, said his children used to play on the Carters’ land, “shooting squirrels with a BB gun”, adding: “Of course, I would call the Secret Service first.” Noting the reaction the anecdote caused, he said: “That’s a normal way of living in Plains – though it might look odd to others.”
The mayor is also a musician, and remembers being hired to play piano at a birthday party for Carter when he was a young man. “He always made you feel like an equal,” Recker said. “I could talk to him like I’m talking to you.”
The mayor of Plains said that Carter “came along at a time when this nation needed honesty at the highest level. You could see he was an honest man, and that’s why he got elected. Whether as President Carter or Jimmy Carter, he lived what he believed. What you see is what you get … I don’t know if there’s a higher compliment you can pay to a man.”
As for his role following Carter’s death, Recker said, “My job, as mayor, is to wrap my arms around the locals, and make sure they get to grieve” – including fielding media requests, like a CNN interview he was scheduled for several hours later.
Across the railroad tracks from city hall, Milton Mills came out of the Plains Pharmacy, having left his bicycle unlocked in front. Now 62, Mills has lived in Plains since he was an infant. “I worked for him when I was 15 or 16,” he said, referring to the Carter family’s peanut farm, where Mills would pack peanuts into bags during summers, “to have money for school clothes”.
Mills, who is Black, said that Carter “would talk up for Black people – but it was hard to make change”. When elected Georgia’s governor in 1970 , Carter made national headlines, memorably saying in his inaugural speech that “the time for racial discrimination is over”.
Yet Plains itself bears lingering after-effects when it comes to race. Mills pointed in one direction across the railroad tracks and said: “That’s where most white folks live.” In the opposite direction: “That’s the Black side.” The population of Plains is about 56% Black.
A retired welder, Mills said now that Carter is dead, “two or three years from now, there’ll probably be no stores open here, and this whole town’s gonna be a historic site”. For decades, visitors have come to Plains, to catch a glimpse of the former presidential couple, or to see Carter teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist church.
Over at Bonita’s restaurant, the only Black-owned business in the center of town, Bonita Hightower was juggling TV interviews and catfish and meatloaf orders. “I’m sad/happy,” she told a CNN reporter. “He left so much; he left a happy path for anyone who wants to do anything great. He did it, and came back to rest – and that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
Hightower repeated an anecdote she has told elsewhere, about how Carter’s family would order fried catfish, cheese grits and coleslaw for the former president. “He could’ve chosen to live anywhere,” Hightower said. “He chose to come back home.”
Just then, three elderly Black women entered the restaurant. They had driven from Lafayette, Alabama. Barbara King, 84, said she “admired” Carter, as the “first to express his views on race relationships openly like that”, referring to the former president’s opposition to segregation and discrimination.
“I just wanted to be here,” said 77-year-old Sara Calloway, sitting across the table. “I cried for President Carter yesterday,” she said. “He was just a plain old white man who wanted to do good – nothing fancy about him.”
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