January 6, 2025
– Bill Crane
Many believe the ultimate accomplishment for any American citizen is to be elected President of the United States. Though in our nearing 250 year history, only 46 have reached that objective, I would submit that its 39th occupant left many more lasting legacies during his years prior to and following his time in Washington, D.C. and the White House.
Our state of Georgia, one of the nation’s original 17 colonies, has only given the nation one president, James Earl “Jimmy” Carter of Plains, Georgia. Woodrow Wilson spent many years of his legal career in Atlanta, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, considered Warm Springs, Georgia his second home, leaving the remainder of his estate to the Polio treatment and hot spring centers there…but only one American, who also happens to be the longest living President is Georgia born, Georgia bred…and most recently has left the world stage and the planet for a better place.
I will leave it to others to dissect the pluses and minuses of the Carter Presidency, one-term serving as a palate cleanser of sorts after Richard M. Nixon and Watergate, as well as straddled with a challenging economy, energy crisis and perhaps America’s longest and most visible hostage crisis.
Carter began life humbly in Plains, Georgia, grew up in a farming family and went on to training as a nuclear engineer and rose through the ranks of the early nuclear navy, serving on the first U.S. Navy commissioned nuclear submarine. Carter was a successful farmer, but never wealthy, and even after 30-published books and the longest post-presidency of the past century, the Carter’s lived comfortably but did not leave a life of affluence. The modest apartment which the former First Couple shared at the Carter Center in Atlanta was smaller than most hotel suites and featured a trundle bed.
Carter, though far from perfect, was in many ways a man ahead of his time, and though his White House tenure was short, he continued to make waves and national and international impact for the four decades which followed. Those legacies and achievements include:
Legacies to Atlanta, Georgia and the American South:
- Protection of Georgia marshes, wetlands and intracoastal waterways from development or encroachment
- Further improvements to the Clean Water Act and EPA, leading to the clean up of the Chattahoochee River and numerous other urban watersheds and primary sources of drinking water
- Creation of the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Education, the latter included massive expansion of Pell Grants and overtime the predominant source of special education funding nationwide
- The Atlanta Project in the early 1990s, as a catalytic and consolidated, community-based attack on poverty, directing aid to those in greatest need and homelessness
- The locating, founding and global expansion of the Carter Presidential Center and Library
Legacies for the Nation & World:
- Global public health improvements in Africa and other third world regions to eradicate the Guinea Worm, River Blindness, Trachoma, Lymphatic Filariais, Malaria and other waterborne pestilences and diseases
- The Carter/Menil Foundation and its work in human rights
- The Carter Center as an elections advisor and observer
- The Egypt/Israeli Peace Accords and related diplomacy, which resulted in Carter winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002
- Former First Lady Rosalyn Carter’s lifelong advocacy for expanding funding and services for mental health
- Though Habitat for Humanity was born in Americus, Georgia, and not a program of the Carter Center, Carter’s long time involvement in building the homes and championing that cause have resulted in hundreds of thousands of Habitat homes across the globe
Legacies to Humanity:
- Carter was an early advocate of servant leadership, and he walked that walk, until he no longer could, teaching Sunday school in Plains, Georgia for nearly six decades and living a life of faith and commitment to his values
- The Carter Center and its programs have been designed and endowed to continue serving the world long beyond the life of its founders
Carter reset the standard for life post-presidency, championing causes and often doing a great deal for those who had the least…living his faith. That example he set was followed by others, including the work done by former Presidents and one-time opponents, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush who together raised several hundred million dollars privately to rebuild the Gulf Coast, post-Hurricane Katrina. And while Jimmy Carter is now rejoining Rosalyn, his many legacies will last for generations beyond.
