Jimmy Carter lived a remarkable life - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

A few short weeks before the most self-involved U.S. President in recent history takes office again, we lost one of the presidents who has contributed more good to the world than just about anyone else.

 

Jimmy Carter, who served as president from 1976 to 1981, died at age 100 at his home in Plains, Georgia. But long before, and long after he left the White House, he was a man who made a difference. 

 

He was only a young man, a U.S. Navy lieutenant who was working on a nuclear submarine project in Schenectady, New York, when the world’s first nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, north of Ottawa, had a meltdown. Carter led a team of men on the mission, which required the reactor to be shut down, taken apart and replaced. An exact replica of the reactor was built at a playground nearby, with Carter and his troops practising taking it apart and putting it back together as quickly as possible.
When it came time to work on the actual reactor, the men worked in shifts of 90 seconds; the high radioactivity made anything longer extremely dangerous. In Carter’s case, he was lowered into the building with a winch, and he had to run over to the reactor casing and had one screw to turn. He had radioactive urine for many weeks afterwards. They were tested continuously. He was told it was likely that he would never have children, yet he had four children with his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn.

 

He retired from the Navy and took up peanut farming in Plains, Georgia, taking over his parents’ 360-acre farm. The farm now is part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. 

 

Later, he became Governor of Georgia and then, in 1976, won the election for President, taking over the nation’s top office in January, 1977. He broke the rules normally associated with that office, doing away with pomp and circumstances. He also appointed 41 women as judges, though none to the Supreme Court, although later Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the women he appointed, rose to that office. Although a southerner at a time when many southern governors resisted allowing Blacks to vote, he named 57 people of colour to the bench.

 

Yet, he was not popular, facing high inflation and, in 1979, he made a decision to welcome Vietnamese boat people to the U.S. following the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, something opposed by 62 per cent of Americans. 

 

Then he was the president when Iran rebelled against the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran and, on Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian supporters of the ongoing revolution’s regime stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 hostages, including diplomats and civilian staff. As the hostages languished in captivity for months, Carter’s popularity further deteriorated. In April of 1980, the U.S. mounted an attempt to take back the hostages, only for the effort to collapse due to logistical failures. Eight service members died in a helicopter accident during the attempt. Ironically, just after Carter lost the election to Ronald Reagan, he was able to free the captives. 

 

But unlike many former presidents who simply set up libraries to celebrate their accomplishments, Carter’s good work increased after his defeat. He monitored elections in more than three dozen countries. He and Rosalynn worked on several building projects as 4,300 homes were built by Habitat for Humanity, including his work at a Canadian project.

 

He set up The Carter Center, which today has a global staff of 3,000, whose work concentrating on international diplomacy and mediation, election monitoring and fighting disease in the developing world and continues to set a standard for what former presidents can accomplish.

 

In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his many contributions to making the world a better, more peaceful place.
But his work was not all high-profile. He was a religious man who volunteered to teach Sunday school in his Plains church.
His funeral will be in Washington on Jan. 9. Current President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who will become President for a second term on Jan. 20, will attend.

 

It’s hard to think of two men more different who have shared the President’s quarters than Carter and Trump. There’s nothing humble about Trump, as there was about Carter. Both had some lack of success in their first term in the White House, Trump being unsuccessful in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and seeing more American lives lost than any other western democracy because he refused to admit the disease was serious. He was unpopular enough that he lost the 2020 presidential election.
But Trump kept talking and changed enough voters’ minds that he won re-election. Carter went on to other great tasks and in the long run accomplished so much.