Jimmy Carter: White House Family Affair and After

PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — When Jimmy Carter stepped onto the national stage, he brought his loved ones with him, introducing Americans to a colorful Georgia family that helped shape the public lives of the 39th President of the United States and now , generations later. , supports him in the last private chapter of his 98 years.

“Family was always important to Uncle Jimmy,” said Kim Fuller, whose father, Billy Carter, was the former president’s younger brother and a favorite subject of national political reporters interested in observing this family from outsiders in Washington.

Carter outlived his nuclear family much longer, including his mother, Lillian, and Billy, both of whom played important roles in his political life, bringing with them charm, the occasional scandal and even a forgotten brand of beer. cheap: “Billy Beer.” The former president’s most consistent political companion, his wife Rosalynn, 95, remains by his side as he receives hospice care at their home in Plains, Georgia, the small town where they were both born.

Married since 1946 — longer than any other presidential couple in the country — the Carters have four children and more than 20 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Along with his nieces, nephews and in-laws, it is a very large extended family that has provided Jimmy Carter with an almost constant stream of visitors since he announced on February 18 that he was forgoing further medical procedures and received palliative care at home. .

“That’s what I’ve known all my life, what most of us have known,” said Fuller, who was of school age when Carter was elected governor in 1970. , then president in 1976. “I remember taking the train to Atlanta to see you soon at the Governor’s Mansion.”

The Carters are not a ruling dynasty like the Bushes of the Republican Party or the Kennedys of the Democratic Party, whose descendant Ted Kennedy was Carter’s rival. But family is crucial to understanding the former president, from his methodical style to his openly declared Baptist faith.

When he launched his nationwide campaign in 1974, it consisted mainly of the “Georgian mob” – the name Washington would give to its out-of-state advisers who came to the capital as foreigners – and their relatives. The peanut farmer-turned-politician added other Georgia supporters who traveled the country campaigning.

Together they formed the Peanut Squad and they set a new standard in presidential politics for interacting with the public while campaigning in states where the first primaries were held.

“Family members would disperse to different states, and then they would all come back on Friday, go through the questions they had received,” Senator Amy Klobuchar told The Associated Press in 2020, after visiting Carter. at a time when she was seeking to secure the nomination for the Democratic presidential nomination.

From his position as a candidate, Carter “spoke to them about how he would respond” to voters so that their representatives would be prepared for their upcoming trips, Klobuchar added.

Carter’s older children were part of the team. His daughter, Amy, was 7 when the campaign began; In general, he did not participate except for his presence at public events with his parents. It was Carter’s mother and her “little brother”, 13 years her junior, who made the headlines.

Lillian was a widow – Carter’s father, “Mr. Earl”, who died in 1953 – who had entrusted the running of the family farm and peanut shop to Jimmy and Rosalynn. Nearing her 70th birthday, Lillian enlisted in the U.S. Peace Corps and spent several years in India while her son rode the governor’s mansion. After he returned, Carter told him that he planned to run for president.

“President of what? he answered.

“She ran the family,” Fuller said. “My dad and Uncle Jimmy could have acted like they were responsible, but we all knew that.”

This didn’t necessarily extend to Carter’s campaigns: he was famous for being a manager who always kept tabs on employee activities. However, Fuller reflected that this characteristic came from his parents, demanding characters who had asked much of Carter in their labors on the family farm.

Unlike Earl Carter, Lillian was relatively progressive even as Carter was a child. She was “safe from criticism because of her independent spirit,” Carter wrote around her 90th birthday.

Described by some journalists as “Georgia’s most liberal woman”, she preferred other topics outside of politics. He said life in the White House was “boring” and he ignored Baptist ideas about abstinence from alcohol.

“I know people get nervous, but I like a little whiskey,” he said. “I’m a Christian, but that doesn’t mean I’m a long-faced obtuse.”

Billy Carter never seemed to find a comfortable place in his brother’s political operation.

“My dad was very happy at the gas station,” Kim Fuller said, gesturing in front of his “Friends of Jimmy Carter” desk, adorned with posters and memorabilia from 1976.

Initially, this meant that Billy Carter would show off his “redneck power ability” to reporters from outside the Plains.

Amber Roessner, a professor at the University of Tennessee and an expert on Carter’s campaigns, said some national media disparaged the Carters as rural Americans unworthy of the White House. Some journalists indulged in their snobbishness by covering Billy Carter while avoiding directly attacking his brother, a Naval Academy graduate and engineer by trade.

Young Carter capitalized on the image he was projecting and struck a deal with Billy Beer. News sources reported that a brewery gave him an annual royalty of $50,000. Today, that amount would be around $240,000, based on consumer price index inflation. At the time, the president’s annual salary was $200,000.

However, a beer deal was an eccentricity, as were Lillian Carter’s scathing remarks.

More serious was the fact that the presidential brother received a $220,000 loan from the Libyan government, which led to one of many government and Internal Revenue Service investigations into Billy Carter’s activities as a apparent intermediary between American and Libyan tankers. A Senate committee found that Billy Carter had never influenced any US policy, effectively exonerating the president of alleged wrongdoing. But the drama was another blow before Carter’s defeat in 1980.

Carter’s sisters, Gloria Carter Spann and Ruth Carter Stapleton, added color and quirkiness, without generating damaging headlines. Gloria was a motorcycle enthusiast who used to take trips across the country on her Harley-Davidson. Ruth was a Christian author and evangelist who once converted pornographer Larry Flynt, at least for a time.

Back in Georgia, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded the Carter Center in Atlanta, which was run not by “the Peanut Brigade” but by policy experts who continued their missions of international diplomacy and public health. In Plains, they became the main members of the Maranatha Baptist Church, holding classes on Sundays in front of packed crowds until Carter recently developed health issues and the COVID-19 pandemic erupted.

Lillian Carter and her daughter Ruth died in 1983, less than three years after Jimmy Carter left. Billy Carter died in 1988. The former president lost his last sister, Gloria, in 1990.

Although they avoided dynastic tendencies, Carter was somewhat imitated by some parents. His eldest son Jack unsuccessfully ran in Nevada for the U.S. Senate in 2006. His grandson Jason served in the Georgia State Senate, like his grandfather, losing the 2014 gubernatorial race .

Now Jason Carter chairs the Carter Center’s board of trustees, but only after his grandparents finally retired in the ’90s.

“He wanted to be able to see and experience the transition for The Carter Center to move forward without him,” Jason Carter said in September, adding, “He would be shocked if I ran for political office again. “.

Meanwhile, Billy’s daughter inherited the church gallery. He returned to teaching classes on Sunday, emphasizing his uncle’s individual faith journey.

“Every breath he takes, he had to do. Every step he takes, he had to do,” he said. “And one day… he will meet Christ, and he knows it. He knows it. And our hearts are sad. But not yours. His heart is not sad.”