A day with the President

Now or Never

James Earl Carter Jr. and I were both born on October first, though his arrival predates mine by 38 years. He was the first Presidential candidate I voted for, initiating my habit of backing the loser most any national election. As a resident of Georgia since 1985, I’ve always felt a bit of guilt for not making the trip to visit Plains, but always put it off in favor of the lure of more distant destinations that seemed more exotic.

Following my recent retirement, I began to compile a list of sites to visit. Browsing through the National Parks list, there it was again – the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains. I recalled reading a recent news piece about how Mr. Carter was beginning to cut back his schedule of teaching Sunday school, and anticipated a time when he would stop completely. That was the spark for me;  now was the time, as such a unique opportunity is rare and fleeting. Because the President’s schedule and mine didn’t line up perfectly I wasn’t able to make it happen on the trip South, but there was a date in May I might be able to make work on the Northbound return.

I only had a couple days before an appointment in Cartersville, so I decided to return to the Georgia Veterans Memorial State Park near Cordele. Plains was only 40 minutes due West and the Park was a known quantity. It was fortuitous that I did all my planning while I was still in Florida, because a few days before my planned visit to Maranatha Baptist Church, their website went down. While not exactly information-packed, the site did offer Mr. Carter’s planned teaching schedule and emphasized the need to arrive very early in order to ensure a seat. This was confirmed by checking a few posts on traveler review sites, so I set my alarm for 3:30 AM, figuring I would be first in line. This was a flawed assumption.

Crowd Control

There is no directional signage for the church, and it is pitch black at 5 AM. I missed my turn and had to pull over and recheck Google maps to verify where I needed to go, putting me 20 minutes behind my anticipated arrival time. No worries, I’d given myself ample slack for just such a situation. Or so I thought. When I reached Maranatha at 5:30 AM, there was already a full lot of cars and a line of more waiting to park. As you enter the gate, each vehicle is issued a numbered chit – I was car number 64. I learned later they stop giving out numbers after 130. The maximum capacity of the sanctuary is three hundred and change, and they pack another hundred into an overflow room where you can watch the lesson via video feed. With multiple people in most of the cars, it was dicey whether I would make it into the main hall or not. They told me that since Mr. Carter announced his impending retirement from teaching, the crowds have grown steadily, and as of Spring 2018 over a hundred visitors have been turned away each Sunday he appears. As accommodating as the congregation is, the fire marshal puts a hard limit on how many can be packed in.

The whole affair is a rather large undertaking for a small rural church that typically sees 20-30 people attend services when President Carter is not teaching. Certainly his doing so dramatically improves the financial picture for the church, but even so you might expect some of the “love their money, resent their presence” attitude I recently encountered in Florida toward tourists. Not so in Plains, every person I met seemed genuinely happy to welcome me, so I never felt self-conscious that I was an uninvited guest, begrudgingly tolerated in the interest of good manners.

Making the Grade

It turns out that luck was with me, as the cutoff ended up being somewhere in the seventies. After a thorough pocket check and wanding by the Secret Service, I was ushered into the sanctuary. The pews were already mostly filled, but as a single I was given one of the metal folding chairs added to the end of the benches. These seats offered a good view but were a bit unforgiving on the body after several hours of tenancy.

Throughout the day you are given a series of talks, both informal and formal on what to expect and how things will be managed, plus a lot of Q&A time to ask questions about the church and the Carter family. A couple of these sessions were emceed by one of Billy Carter’s daughters, who had some interesting stories to share. One of my favorites was about how the only time she went to Washington DC was for the inauguration, and being 16 “it didn’t impress me much”. She said the thing she remembers most was how Shirley Temple asked her to help her put on her mink coat, an article you wouldn’t see in Plains, Georgia. She made it clear that she felt her father had been treated poorly by the press, and the picture the media painted of Billy Carter was not accurate.

Other talks came from Jan, a retired fourth grade teacher. She had the temperament to make a good drill instructor, and was perfectly suited for the job of crowd control. Also doing Q&A was Brandon, the newly appointed pastor fresh out of seminary.  When he asked the assembly how old we thought he was, a woman blurted out “Twelve?”. Short, with a high nasal voice and a lisp, he was about as perfect a reverse image of the stately President Carter as you could get. He was a decent comic though, and when asked about Rosalynn’s activities in the community told a good anecdote about overhearing Jimmy once ask her if she was glad she didn’t marry “the other guy” since with him she became First Lady. Without hesitation, she shot back: “Well, if I’d married the other guy, he would have been President instead of you.”

The logistics of the whole production are obviously well practiced – after all Mr. Carter has been teaching Sunday School here every week since 1981, so the congregation and Secret Service have had plenty of time to get it all ironed out. (Random bit recollection: the agents call their explosive sniffing dog “O-bomb-a”).

The Lesson

Mr. Carter begins by visiting the overflow room to personally greet the folks there. Then he comes to the main sanctuary and repeats the process, which is a ritual you have been previously briefed on. Once that is done, he gives a brief newsy recap on what he’s been up to lately prior to beginning the Bible study lesson. I found this fascinating, as he had just returned from giving the commencement address at Liberty University. To refresh your memory, this is the school founded by Jerry Falwell, and was the center of the Moral Majority universe in the early eighties. Falwell was highly critical of President Carter at the time, saying that Carter lacked character and even questioning his faith. He was so successful at getting under Carter’s skin that at one point he was quoted as saying “Jerry Falwell can go straight to hell, and I mean that in a Christian way.”

But that was decades ago. Falwell is dead, and the Moral Majority empire nearly went bankrupt after scandals rocked his televangelist allies Swaggart and Bakker. Today Liberty is run by Jerry Falwell Jr., who unlike his namesake respects Mr. Carter and expressed interest in mending the fracture in the Baptist community his father caused that still exists to this day. Ever the peacemaker, Jimmy agreed to a conference and even gave a commencement speech urging unity of purpose to the Liberty grads.

Mr. Carter also had a few words about the recognition of Jerusalem by the US “putting an end to all hope for peace in the Middle East”, but that’s a topic I’m not qualified to comment on, given my limited understanding of the politics involved.

The Bible study of the day was of Romans 2. Not being a biblical scholar, I can’t do justice to Mr. Carter’s presentation, but the gist of his message was that Paul was telling the Romans it was useless to argue about whether you must first become a Jew before you could become a Christian, since all Christians received equal salvation, just as those that disobey the will God receive equal damnation regardless of their path to becoming Christian. He worked this back to his previous topic of unifying the factions of the Baptist church, and finished with the idea that with free will comes responsibility: If you are not happy with your life, it is your own fault, because Christ has given you the opportunity to change it.

Please forgive my poor attempt and summation here, as I have neither Mr. Carter’s eloquence or wisdom to convey his message as he did. Suffice it to say it was a compelling and inspirational 45 minutes with the President communicating in a very personal and intimate way to everyone in attendance.

The Service

Once the Bible study is portion is complete, there is a short five minute break before the main service begins. You are free to leave at this point, but the hook is that Jimmy and Rosalynn only sit for pictures after the service is complete. That holds most of the crowd; those who do leave are replaced with folks from the overflow room, and empty seats left open in the section reserved for members to attend the service are likewise filled from the bullpen. There is an organist and a pianist, but no choir. Young Brandon gave an impassioned sermon on being an evangelist, but his youth and style just didn’t click for me. There is no doubt he is a true believer, but as a spiritual leader he wasn’t my cup of tea. Perhaps with ten more years of life behind him I would find him more relevant.

The big surprise was a longtime member of the congregation named Eunice Griggs had passed away the night before. Eunice was a schoolmate of Rosalynn and very active at Maranatha, so the church family was understandably saddened. During an unannounced “special music” section of the program, Jimmy must have made a phone call, because the woman who performed Amazing Grace and her harmonica accompanist were clearly world class. I didn’t catch her name and it wasn’t printed on the program, but she had the power of a young Aretha and the vocal emotion of Billie Holiday – the performance was just stunning and drew an ovation from everyone in the hall. Though I didn’t recognize her, apparently she has done the national anthem for several major sporting events for both the US and Canada, and I’m assuming has a recording career. She was not just local talent, that’s for sure.

The Ministry of Finance

Two collections were taken, one before Bible study during the pastor’s Q&A and one during the main service, so Plains is now well salted with fresh two dollar bills. Mr. Jefferson, meet Mr. Carter. There was mention in the bulletin of a current fundraiser they had going on: order your whole smoked pork butt now for only $30. That made me chuckle – BBQ is everywhere! Another source of revenue for the church is the sale of recordings. You can buy a CD or DVD of the day’s program, no doubt grabbed from the video feed they do for the overflow room. It’s a simple one camera setup, nothing fancy for you media industry readers.

All these streams are vital for a congregation with just over a hundred members on the books in a town where 40% of the population lives below the poverty line. Cotton is no longer king and Mr. Peanut is a poor successor to the throne, it seems. Plains gets a boost from tourism and Americus looks pretty healthy thanks to the Habitat for Humanity HQ and being the county seat, but most of the little towns in this part of Georgia are on the verge of vanishing into the dust like Tara.

Picture Time

The final act is the photo op with the Carters. Like a wedding, the pictures seem to go on forever, despite the fast pacing of the volunteers. The drill is you have your camera/phone out as you approach the head of the line and hand it to the designated shooter. She starts snapping away instantly as you approach the seated couple. You pose, the shooter clicks and your phone is handed off to another helper for you to collect on your way out. The whole process takes no more than ten seconds. No handshaking, autographing or conversations allowed. You are thoroughly advised that if you break these rules the friendly Secret Service agents may get decidedly un-friendly in a hurry, so nobody tried it during my visit. The Carters do have a soft spot for children however, so they may give particularly cute kids a squeeze here and there.

The setup is such that you have to be on one side or the other, not behind. Since I had to choose, I went to the First Lady’s side. This one’s for you Mom.

 

The Last Word

I had a wonderful time visiting Maranatha Baptist Church, and am grateful for the kindness shown to me by the congregation, the Carter family and the people of Plains. It was an experience I won’t soon forget, and if you have the slightest inclination to visit yourself, I urge you to make plans immediately. Jimmy is 94, and no one knows how much longer he will be able to make these public appearances. He is a treasure, and if at all possible you should take the opportunity while it remains. Just plan on getting there early. Really, REALLY early.