The hometown that drew Jimmy Carter back keeps vigil

PLAINS, Ga. — Jimmy Carter has always come home to Plains.

After leaving the Navy in 1953, he returned to Plains, the tiny Georgia town where he was raised, and where he eventually started the political career that would lead him to the presidency. Years later, he found in Plains a haven where he could reinvent himself after a stinging defeat that ousted him from the White House. And more recently, it was a place to heal, as he weathered severe health setbacks.

Now, Carter, 98, has come back to Plains once again, drawn by the comforts of home and the embrace of a community that he has cherished and relied upon through every chapter of his life, including what now appears to be his last.

On Saturday, his representatives said that after several short hospital visits, Carter entered hospice care in the home just off Main Street that he has shared with his wife Rosalynn for decades.

The residents of Plains have been keeping vigil, navigating a wait that is both somber and, in many ways, surreal, as news cameras pour into town and residents go about their lives.

“People ask me all the time: ‘How is he doing?’” said Marvin Laster, the former CEO of the Boys & Girls Club in nearby Albany, Georgia, who befriended Carter while working with him at the organization’s outpost in Plains. “He’s good with the spirit and he’s strong in his faith, and that’s all that matters.”

Carter is known by his neighbors as Mr. Jimmy, a familiar face from community gatherings or the Sunday school lessons he taught up until a few years ago. About 550 people live in Plains, and Sumter County, which includes Plains, is one of the few rural areas in Georgia where Democrats have had a slight advantage in recent presidential elections.

The appeal of Plains, Carter has said, was its promise of the kind of humble, small-town existence he desired after the presidency. In fact, the only disagreement that Laster remembered having with Carter was over the name of the Boys & Girls Club in Plains, which is officially called the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter unit: Carter raised a motion to strip his and his wife’s names from it, but Laster and other board members voted no.

As much as Carter wanted a semblance of a regular life, the result of his living in Plains turned it into no ordinary town. The signs marking town limits boast that Plains is home to the 39th president. The farm where he was raised just outside of town is a national park. His modest house is surrounded by black security fencing and guard posts.

Other small towns in this part of Georgia, linked together in a constellation of country roads, have withered or have streets lined with fast-food joints and convenience stores. The center of Plains has a cafe and a row of gift shops that bustle with tourists.

Without Carter, “you wouldn’t have the downtown atmosphere that you have,” said Jeff Clements, an owner of the Buffalo Peanut Co., a commercial peanut sheller and seed treater that owns what was once the Carter family’s warehouse.

But his fame is not always easy, particularly in a community this small. Not long after the announcement Saturday, television news trucks started hogging parking spots downtown, and reporters approached shopkeepers and residents, asking questions they’ve already answered many times before.

At one point, after giving about a half-dozen interviews, Clements climbed into a tractor and helped with hauling peanuts, just to take a break from the hubbub.

Clements said his politics did not align with Carter’s, but he especially respected the humanitarian work he has done since leaving the presidency.

“The fact he was still willing to be a Christian and act in a Christian way and not be afraid to do so in today’s time,” he said, “that’s more so his legacy than anything he did while he was president.”

Jean Ludescher, who lives in Minnesota, had been spending the winter in Florida. She knew she wanted to drive up at some point to Plains to visit Carter’s hometown, but she decided to come sooner after learning about his condition.

“The first president you get to vote for is kind of a big deal,” she said as she sat on a bench outside a downtown shop with Leo, her 9-month-old giant schnauzer.

A woman passing by interrupted.

“Has anyone heard anything on the news today?” she asked. “Is he OK?”

There had been no update.

Don Schumacher, Ludescher’s companion, joined her outside and said Carter’s death would mean losing someone he saw as a moral compass for the country. He noted the candor that had been a defining characteristic of Carter’s legacy.

“I think he’s America’s Gandhi,” he said. “We need him.”

Carter has been celebrated for his large-scale, global efforts to eradicate disease and protect democracy. But Laster said the former president and his wife also embraced projects that were much smaller, yet consequential in their own way.

“They were really led by the words of the maker,” he said of the Carters, paraphrasing a line from the Gospel of Matthew. “They tried to do everything they could for the least of those.”

Laster had particular pride in the Boys & Girls Club, which Carter helped build by hand and for which he helped raise a $2.5 million endowment, as he insisted that none of the students should have to pay fees to participate. The club is directly across the street from his house — proof, Laster said, that his attention never strayed too far from home.