Fair Winds, President Carter
A life well lived
James Earl Carter Jr. has died, and the world has lost a great man.
President Obama on President Carter's passing
President Obama captures Jimmy Carter's fundamental goodness–tremendous decency–quite well.
For decades, you could walk into Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia on some Sunday mornings and see hundreds of tourists from around the world crammed into the pews. And standing in front of them, asking with a wink if there were any visitors that morning, would be President Jimmy Carter — preparing to teach Sunday school, just like he had done for most of his adult life ...
Others were likely there because of what President Carter accomplished in the longest, and most impactful, post-presidency in American history — monitoring more than 100 elections around the world; helping virtually eliminate Guinea worm disease, an infection that had haunted Africa for centuries; becoming the only former president to earn a Nobel Peace Prize; and building or repairing thousands of homes in more than a dozen countries with his beloved Rosalynn as part of Habitat for Humanity.
But I’m willing to bet that many people in that church on Sunday morning were there, at least in part, because of something more fundamental: President Carter’s decency ...
Maranatha Baptist Church will be a little quieter on Sundays, but President Carter will never be far away — buried alongside Rosalynn next to a willow tree down the road, his memory calling all of us to heed our better angels. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to the Carter family, and everyone who loved and learned from this remarkable man.
