Mourning and remembrances across the country continue for former President Jimmy Carter, who now lies in state in Washington. His funeral is Thursday.
Carter’s legacy both inside and outside the White House is also being remembered in the Northeast, including western Massachusetts.
Beside a busy Main Street in Northampton, a small memorial was assembled this week, made up of beams and a wooden door frame erected by the Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity - dedicated to one of Habitat’s biggest champions, Jimmy Carter.
On Wednesday, locals and activists looking to honor the former president gathered there and the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence it stands before. The assembly featured a small service given by Reverend Eric Cherry.
“…we are humbled to have called Jimmy our friend,” the congregation’s interim minister said. “May we honor his legacy by following his example of servant leadership. Amen - blessings to you and to the family of Jimmy Carter.”
With sharpies hanging from the beams, passersby are welcome to sign the memorial. Already, there are several "Best Ex-President" messages.
It will be up for another week before the lumber ends up being used for a home in Greenfield, says Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity Executive Director Megan McDonough.
She told reporters that the installation’s doorway symbolizes the many doors both Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter opened with their advocacy.
“The Carters have been such an inspiration to Habitat for Humanity. They gathered over 100,000 volunteers through the Carter Work Project over the last 40 years, and have helped more than 4,000 families across the world in 14 different countries,” McDonough said. “So, we're just a small group here in the Pioneer Valley, but we wanted to pay our respects.”
It's a legacy being spotlighted as the nation remembers the 39th president, who died at age 100 on Dec. 29, a little over a year after the death of the former First Lady.
Carter's former Chief of Protocol, Evan Dobelle, recalls the president as a man of extraordinary character committed to figuring out how to do right, even when it might not be politically convenient.
“… it was the making of, without unnecessary compromise, a great record, whether it be the Camp David Peace Accords with Israel and Egypt … whether it be the Panama Canal treaties, which avoided a Vietnam in South America for us, whether it be deregulating airlines, where now you can fly to places [via] JetBlue and Spirit ... whether it be doubling the size of the landmass of our federal parks," Dobelle told WAMC in a phone interview.
Endorsing Carter while still serving as mayor of Pittsfield, both Dobelle and his wife, Kit, would become part of the Carter administration – one, he says, that featured a number of accomplishments overshadowed by coverage of low points such as the Iranian hostage crisis.
Also overshadowing some of those accomplishments, he says: Carter’s charity work, including a campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease.
Dobelle himself would later serve as president of several colleges and universities, including Westfield State in Massachusetts.
Political consultant Anthony Cignoli, who met with Carter several times over the years, says horrific inflation and an oil crisis didn’t help things, either.
Praising the former president’s public service and the standards in civility he set, Cignoli adds one of the administration’s hallmarks was its policy work – the type of accomplishments that end up being hard to sell an electorate on, especially in the midst of an economy featuring households tightening belts.
“So much of what Carter actually got done was the grunt work of the presidency, the hard work,” Cignoli said. “The kind of stuff that often makes an electorate’s eyes glaze over: tax policy, Medicaid issues - that type of thing that's not as sexy or as scintillating, perhaps as ‘Gosh, golly, gee-whiz, let's go to war somewhere,’ or ‘Let's do something monumental and gigantic.’”
Carter would endure a clobbering during his 1980 re-election bid, featuring western Massachusetts mostly sticking with him even as Ronald Reagan carried the Commonwealth by a thin-margin.
Cignoli says some of Carter’s close ties to the region can be traced to another political consultant, Joseph Napolitan of Springfield, who’s credited with coining the very term “political consultant.”
Regardless, the 39th president’s graciousness endured – something Cignoli says he got to witness himself while at an event promoting literacy in 1997.
“There were maybe 200 people in the room, but we were separate from them and talking at our table, and something amazing happened - Dolly Parton arrived,” he recalled. “The entire room forgot that a former U.S. president was in the room with us. Everyone gravitated towards Dolly - everyone was fixated. When it was over, I was embarrassed and looked over to the President to say, ‘I am so sorry, Mr. President, to get distracted like that.’ I had ignored him myself for about 30 minutes. And he just smiled. He goes, ‘Tony, Tony. I'm used to it. It's Miss Dolly.’”
