President Carter gracious on his special night

www.zwire.com Candid Comments January 30, 2003

Joel P. SmithI've been fascinated with our good neighbor from Plains, Jimmy Carter, ever since Election Day, Oct. 16, 1962, when Quitman County's political boss tried to steal the Georgia senate seat from him. Days before the announcement in Oslo that the former senator-governor-president had won the Nobel Peace Prize, Sam Singer from Lumpkin stopped by The Tribune. He reminded me it was exactly 40 years ago the ballot box was stuffed in Georgetown and Carter challenged the system.

The 39th President wouldn't have made it to the White House nor to Oslo, Norway, to pick up the Peace Prize if the peanut farmer and peanut warehouseman hadn't gotten riled up and taken on the powers that be.

I didn't make it to the inauguration in 1977 when Ann Singer and several other members of the Peanut Brigade decorated the White House for the reception. But I was front and center for the proud home folks' Jimmy Carter Nobel Peace Prize Celebration last Saturday night in Americus.

The B.W. and I were Sam and Ann's guests when the Plains Better Hometown Program-similar to Eufaula's Main Street Program-held the local celebration in the recently restored 1900s Rylander Theatre, complete with a big band concert and gala reception next door in the Habitat For Humanity's international headquarters.

I told President Carter that ever since I read his latest book, "An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood," I've plotted to bring him back to Eufaula. Fendall Hall would be the perfect venue to reflect on the life and times of James Earl Carter, his family and the Lower Chattahoochee Basin.

I joined the First Baptist's Tired and Retired Sunday School Class' visit to President Carter's Sunday School Class in Plains a year ago. There was such a large crowd in the sanctuary I didn't get to buttonhole him, but I did leave him a copy of my pictorial history, "A Eufaula Album."

Saturday during the reception, Singer jokingly told the former President that he and I were going to write a book about him. Carter laughed and looking at Sam and said, "Not you." Well, Sam Singer could write a darned good book.

He was politickin' for Carter with the Peanut Brigade, knocking on doors in New Hampshire at his own expense. His life has been almost as interesting as the Navy Academy graduate's.

Plains Mayor Boze Godwin presented Carter with a joint resolution on behalf of his hometown, Americus and Sumter County. He touched on his fellow townsman's varied careers: Habitat for Humanity volunteer, best selling author, President and statesman.

The celebration could very well have been held at the Carter Center in Atlanta, "where Carter mediates conflicts throughout the world and works to improve race relations," with national press coverage, but this was a Sumter County and its municipalities' local celebration for their favorite son.

When Mill Simmons, Plains Better Hometown chair, made remarks about Carter's hands-on involvement with downtown revitalization, I thought the President could also bring his message to Eufaula's Main Street proponents, if we can lure him across the river.

I reminded him of the time Tom Mann hosted him and me for breakfast before a fishing trip in Eufaula. He said to tell Tom hello, and said he had fished for a different kind of bass in Venezuela a few days before when he was in Caracas. He was there to propose a plan to lead Venezuela to elections and end a strike against President Hugo Chavez, which has drastically cut production in the number five oil-exporting country.

President Carter couldn't have been more gracious or more appreciative of his home folks' hospitality. "This is a very important night to me," he told the crowd following the enjoyable concert. "I was 17 when I left Georgia Southwestern College." He recalled his career and added, "I didn't hesitate to come back to the community."

But he quipped, "Oslo was my favorite place," when he visited Norway recently to accept the Nobel Prize.

"The Nobel Peace Prize has come to Georgia an extraordinary number of times." He was the 19th American, the third U.S. president and the second Georgian to be awarded the prize. President Theodore Roosevelt, whose wife was from Georgia, won the award in 1906 for his role in drawing up a peace treaty between Japan and Russia. President Woodrow Wilson won in 1902 for his role in founding the League of Nations.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was the other Georgian recipient, selected for his civil rights movement.

Acknowledging the Sentimental Journey band's concert filled with music of yesterday, Carter mused, "This is a changing world." He recalled the unprecedented efforts of the Peanut Brigade's trips to New Hampshire, Iowa and Pennsylvania to campaign for him at their own expense.

"I'm thankful for the Nobel Peace Prize, the Carter Center and I'm very proud of the country.

"My faith can reach across chasms that divide people in a spirit of love that binds us together."

The mayor of Plains says I might lure the former president to Eufaula, if I use Tom Mann as bait.

Sam Singer and I might be successful, if Venezuela, Cuba and all the other trouble spots in the world would behave.

We could bring the Nobel Peace Prize celebration to Eufaula and Georgetown.