By Troy Turner
The gray-haired man wore a carpenter’s apron with the same authority as an Old West gunslinger donning his six-shooter.
Armed with a hammer, he could drive nails fast and steady, while his friendly smile could give way at any moment to the steely eyes of a craftsman vexed with the sight of a single flaw.
His cap was pulled down low and he was sitting on a rooftop with shingles draped over his shoulder, and that was the Jimmy Carter I came to know during our first acquaintance. It occurred while working beside him for a week as a journalist-turned-volunteer building houses in Anniston, Alabama, with the non-profit Habitat for Humanity.
He was wearing denim
The hot sun beaming down on us made the picnic umbrella a prized feature when he called time-out from the pounding of nails. Grabbing a cup of ice water, Carter sat in a lawn chair and graciously granted a private interview.
Having grown up in the rural South myself, I well understood why there were folks living amongst us in desperate need and plenty grateful for help in becoming first-time homeowners.
I also understood well the value of character and leadership-by-example when it came to a former United States president wearing denim and sweating on a roof. So did a crowd of almost 3,000 volunteers looking to build more than 30 houses within a week.
Time with the Zulu tribe
The Anniston buildout and what I saw that week was no surprise to me, as I had a good idea of what was to come after spending a few weeks the year prior far from Alabama… in Durbin, South Africa.
Back in those days, Carter would dedicate at least two weeks a year to volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity. One week would be for a domestic build in the States, and the other on an international build. Before coming to Anniston that hot summer in 2003, he had worked the year before in South Africa.
Somehow, I was able to convince my newspaper publisher into sending me on a three-person team to Durbin to study the massive impact a project like this – with Carter leading a cast of volunteer celebrities, thousands of volunteer workers and dozens of parachute journalists – could have on a small city such as Anniston.
It also was less than a decade since apartheid had ended in South Africa. We could do a separate project on that and its comparisons to civil rights movements in Alabama. And, with the growing AIDS problem at the time, especially among minority populations, we could study comparisons on that.
Such were the days of successful community newspapers, or at least one with pride in its journalism and the willingness of an owner to invest in its community. The Anniston Star was that, and more.
A special piece of glass
Carter’s work in South Africa benefited a Durbin-area, poverty-stricken community of the Zulu tribe, one still roiled in political fights of the day. Right away, we sought out a variety of sources on site who could help us.
Among my favorite: A Zulu leader who had met Carter, a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, and himself became a Christian minister. Not just a minister, but a bona fide preacher.
One of my favorite memories is of him and his family inviting our team to lunch in their small, humble home, which had been built by Habitat, where he offered to say a protective prayer for us.
I asked if he might say it in the Zulu language.
He did.
That wasn’t, however, the only Carter influence we found in the village. Another home built by the Habitat construction army included something very special implanted in the outside stucco wall next to the front doorway, and I say doorway because some of the Zulu tribal residents still chose not to use doors.
It was a tiny, thick-looking piece of glass.
The Habitat team wanted the American dream of freedom and opportunity to be a part of its message in South Africa, so members brought with them and placed this piece of glass as décor on the home that Carter himself had worked on and helped build.
It was a piece of glass fragment from the World Trade Center, destroyed only months earlier in the 9/11 attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
They could have chosen some kind of “Jimmy Carter was here” souvenir to leave behind, but that’s not how Jimmy Carter nor Habitat operated. Instead, it was an encouraging sign to promote perseverance.
The downtrodden Zulu understood it well, and with that one thick but small, smooth piece of burned glass plugged into an outside wall, suddenly a nobody from nowhere became a homeowner with a widely admired tribal symbol of power and resolve, gifted from a powerful leader in another land.
That was the Jimmy Carter I came to know in a Zulu village half a world away in South Africa.
The Panama Canal decision
Yes, thank you, I said when offered my own cup of ice water that hot June day in Alabama, as Carter settled in his chair and basically told me to fire away with my questions.
After asking those necessary for an article in the local paper about the Habitat build, then came the fun part.
“A question from my Dad, who still is mad at you because he claims you were wrong for giving away the Panama Canal. Were you?” I asked.
The former president tried to explain. It was an attempt, he said, to limit conflict in the region where perceived American imperialism gave rise to dangerous political tensions, and a peaceful transition of canal operations and control seemed a better choice than simply sending troops and fighting saboteurs.
Additionally, the treaty Carter negotiated still would allow the United States to defend the canal, and to use it. The U.S. Senate narrowly approved the measure, which was signed Sept. 27, 1979.
That was Jimmy Carter, the diplomat.
Unfortunately, the move failed to eliminate Panamanian resentment toward the U.S., and a decade later in 1989 President George H.W. Bush ordered an invasion of Panama to remove leader Manuel Noriega from power. The invasion succeeded, and by 1999 during President Bill Clinton’s time in office, the canal was again turned over to the Panamanians, who have administered it since.
Carter also talked about health care issues and challenges. Cuba, at the time, was known for training doctors, sending them abroad, and providing its people with improved health care access, according to Carter, who wished to study closer what the island nation 90 miles south of Florida was doing. This, despite Cuba’s longtime communist ties to old U.S. Cold War adversary the Soviet Union and remaining a thorn in the side of American political interests while under the Castro regime.
Carter at that stage in his life more than two decades after his presidency was no longer thinking about capturing votes or avoiding political flack. Instead, he was seeking ways to improve health care even if it meant taking ideas from a socialist regime.
That kind of thinking didn’t bode well for him back when he lost a re-election bid to Ronald Reagan, and it still caused resentment among hawks and hardliners on the American political scene who wished to continue having no association with anything Cuba.
Yet, it was this kind of open-mindedness and a willingness to talk bluntly about it, popular or not, that allowed me to see Jimmy Carter, the unguarded solution-seeker.
‘Mad is what he was!’
The late Anniston Star publisher Brandt Ayers in those days was a staunch liberal Democrat surrounded in Alabama by powerful Republicans. He greatly enjoyed using his newspaper’s voice and his own frequently syndicated personal columns to stoke the emotional fires in the belly of the most-ruby red of conservative states. He also never shied away from talking about his political connections.
He basked in capturing audiences to hear his yarns, such as that of the day former President Bill Clinton called to say hello and ask if daughter Chelsea could visit while on the road from Arkansas to Atlanta.
Clinton later confirmed to me his relationship with Ayers when I met him in New York during a fellowship at Columbia University. Ayers had asked me to pass along his hellos, upon when I did, Clinton affectionally responded: “Brandy Ayers. How is that old codger doing?”
The Ayers-Carter relationship seemed just as sincere, or perhaps much more so, as Ayers often talked of Carter in terms of genuine friendship.
Oddly enough, however, the most intriguing conversation I myself shared with Carter was when I tried to play peacemaker between Jimmy Carter, the recently anointed 2002 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and my publisher boss Brandt Ayers, who was mad at him for breaking a promised dinner engagement.
Ayers had arranged for a prominent community banquet-type dinner featuring Carter as the main guest of honor, and Carter had agreed to attend. However, when lingering political turmoil erupted surrounding the previous 2000 elections in the Caribbean island nation of Haiti, which for decades was and remains mired in corruption, poverty and disarray, an urgent plea was sent to Carter asking for his help.
Carter and his beloved wife Rosalynn, a strong and accomplished person in her own right, had founded in partnership with Emory University, The Carter Center, based in Atlanta, “on a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering. The Center seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health,” according to its mission statement.
Carter along with his center’s resources and expertise was invited on a “mission seeking solutions to an impasse on disputed election results and to develop plans to fortify Haiti’s democratic institutions.”
That to Carter seemed more important than keeping a banquet dinner date in Anniston, Alabama, and thus Carter changed his plans, creating a rift between the two that returned to light during the Habitat week.
During a celebratory community dinner to promote the Habitat build, Carter stepped aside with me and I mentioned how Ayers thought much of their friendship but was simply disappointed.
“He was mad, is what he was!” Carter retorted. Yet, he agreed the two should talk, and soon after they did so and their friendship appeared renewed. But not before yours truly had a story of my own about making peace between my boss, and the reigning Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
A final salute
Jimmy Carter had many successes and plenty of failures during his career of public service.
Nevertheless, Jimmy Carter the man always, no matter what role he tried to fill, presented himself in almost any scenario as a man of great character, something not always easy to find in someone such as a world leader connected to the demanding and twisted arena of global politics.
He was a simple man, a complex thinker, a candid speaker and a peacemaker. And a pretty darn good carpenter.
That was the Jimmy Carter I came to know.
Troy Turner is the editor and senior consultant for AlaDefense.com. He can be contacted at [email protected]. His bio can be found here: Meet the editor.
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