First, I wish you all a happy New Year.
You’ve heard a lot about former President Jimmy Carter but he and his family are pretty special for those of us who served in the Peace Corps.
Carter’s mother, Lillian, was nearly seventy when she joined the Peace Corps in 1966, around the same time we did. My dad, a year older than Lillian Carter, was terrified. The US had been good to us; the rest of the world was recovering from the holocaust and trying to get over racial and religious prejudices. Lillian Carter, an experienced nurse, served in India for 21 months in her early 70s helping patients with leprosy while her son was running for governor of Georgia. Papa eventually visited and I got to introduce him there to a lovely Peace Corps volunteer who would be his daughter-in-law. But a president’s mother who’d served in the Peace Corps won a big place in my heart.
After Jimmy’s election, one of our friends, another Peace Corps Volunteer, went down to Plains, Georgia, to visit the Carters. He and his wife dedicated their lives to improving life for African Americans. He came home with lovely memories of Lillian Carter’s warmth and hospitality. Lillian’s son, president Jimmy Carter, and his wife, Roslyn, all lived lives of selfless devotion to people of all kinds that makes them feel very special to us.
Perhaps I’m prejudiced but I’ve always felt Carter didn’t get credit for his accomplishments while getting blamed for events he couldn’t control. In 1978 and 1979 a series of interrelated Middle Eastern crises hit the Carter Administration. In 1978 Carter arranged the Camp David Accords between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank, and their two countries largely normalized relations. But the deal wasn’t well-received by other nearby countries. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated later partially because of the Accords.
In 1979, Iranians revolted against their Shah, stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, and held the staff, including a friend of ours, as hostages. Carter negotiated for their release but, at his successor’s request, the Iranians held them hostage until inauguration day, 1981. Carter got the blame for failing to free them.
Meanwhile, the Iranian Revolution affected the worldwide price of oil. OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, took advantage of it by reducing oil production, inflating oil prices even more. That affected prices across America. OPEC’s conflict with the US began under prior Administrations. Carter had little control over its behavior, but got the blame. Similarly, Carter, not Reagan, began the deregulation of the American economy, beginning with the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978. But Reagan got the credit instead.
Always forward looking, Carter put solar panels on the White House, established the Departments of Energy and Education, expanded Head Start, mental health care and pushed for what later became Medicare.
After leaving the White House, Jimmy and Roslyn Carter, spent decades working for peace and to alleviate human suffering, including their own sweat equity building Habitat for Humanity housing.
Carter’s position in the hearts of Americans and people around the world would only continue to rise. No president gets everything right and Carter wasn’t blessed by the gift of powerful and engaging speech. But he was an honest, caring man, who did his best while he had the strength. I will miss former President Jimmy Carter. Indeed, we’ll miss the Carter family.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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