Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s everlasting love story
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were the longest married presidential couple in U.S. history. Their love story was timeless.
Jimmy Carter was many contrasting things in his impossibly productive century on the planet.
President and peanut farmer. Naval submariner and softball aficionado. Sunday school teacher and pal of hard-partying Willie Nelson.
But one diehard pursuit holds no inherent contradiction: Carter’s decades-long dedication to Habitat for Humanity, the Georgia-based homebuilding charity for which he (and his wife, Rosalynn) arguably became the unofficial face.
When Carter, who died Sunday at age 100, first showed up alongside other Habitat volunteers at a decrepit tenement on New York’s Lower East Side in 1984, the cultural zeitgeist did a double take. What was a man just four years removed from the White House doing here, hammer in hand and sweat on his brow?
“That image of a former president of the United States sleeping in a church basement by night and doing carpentry by day captured the imagination,” Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat since 2005, told USA TODAY a few years before Carter’s death. “It redefined what a post-presidency and servant leadership meant.”
It also created a bit of a headache for Reckford. “One of the persistent myths at this point is that President Carter started and runs Habitat,” he says with a chuckle. “No question, though, he put us on the map.”
Jimmy Carter placed a premium on doing
For many Americans, the Carters indeed became synonymous with the organization, thanks in part to media interest in a former world leader putting his muscle where his mouth was.
Carter seemed to relish such physical labor, always providing that trademark toothy grin mixed with endearing “aw-shucks” charm. But those who came to know Carter’s Habitat for Humanity construction marathons say the truth is he was a driven man in all areas of his life and considered this work as meriting the same dedication, skill and expediency as affairs of state.
Each year, the couple would set aside one week to join other volunteers. The modest homes they built were for those who desperately needed shelter and could contribute to rent but did not qualify for traditional mortgages. Beneficiaries also committed to partnering with the group to help build homes, sometimes their own.
With that gesture, Carter put a spotlight on the notion that good deeds were not simply for when time allowed. Acts of charity, rather, required a dedicated time commitment.
Habitat was founded in 1976 by Georgians Millard and Linda Fuller as a Christian organization – the couple were dismissed by the board in 2005 after charges of inappropriate behavior were leveled at Millard Fuller, who died in 2009 – but gathered significant momentum after Carter put on a hardhat in the ’80s. The organization has helped more than 59 million people “build or improve the place they call home.”For decades, in good weather and bad, the Carters never missed a build week – better known as The Carter Work Project – personally working alongside more than 108,000 volunteers in 14 countries to renovate and repair 4,400-plus homes, according to Habitat.
From the Mekong Delta to the Gulf Coast, from Maine to Mississippi, wherever the Carters went, statesmen and celebrities were quick to appear. But Carter would politely brush them off and pick up his hammer, citing a tight work timeline.
In 2018, Carter and his wife, then 93 and 90, rolled up the sleeves of their work shirts and helped a few fortunate souls in Mishawaka and South Bend, Indiana, put a roof over their heads. It was their 35th Carter Work Project. Only COVID-19 stopped them.
Why Habitat for Humanity? The country is awash in organizations that provide relief for those in need. For Carter, those connected to him say, it had to do with his deep Christian faith.
But there were other reasons as well, ranging from an opportunity to act on his passion for woodworking and the altruistic influence of Carter’s mother, Lillian, a nurse who often could be found helping the poor around the family’s home in Plains, Georgia.
Driven by that ingrained sense of mission, the Carters in 1982 founded the Carter Center, which in the ensuing decades saw the former president monitor contentious elections around the world, help with eradicating Guinea worm disease and other global illnesses and work to reduce the stigma around mental health issues.
But despite the magnitude of those accomplishments, somehow his Habitat work edged to the fore of public perception.
“What’s interesting about Habitat is that it is one week a year of work, but it’s the kind of work that is easy for someone to comprehend because here he is with the hammer – everyone understands that,” says Steven Hochman, Carter’s assistant and director of research at the Carter Center. “But let’s just not forget that millions have avoided conflict or had free elections or been cured from a disease, thanks to his work through the center. It’s been overall an inspirational life.”
No slacking off allowed on Jimmy Carter’s work team
Although Carter’s early commitment to Habitat was genuine, the political optics of his involvement served to recraft the narrative around the one-term Democratic president who was swept out of office on the heels of the Iranian hostage crisis by a landslide for Republican Ronald Reagan, says Doug Brinkley, a historian at Rice University in Houston.
“When Carter picks up that hammer in New York in 1984, we’re in the middle of the Reagan revolution, and Carter is still seen as a failed ex-president,” says Brinkley, author of “The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House,” which chronicles the influence of Habitat on Carter’s reinvention. “His doing that was a new way to beat up on Reagan. Here Carter is working for poor people while Reagan is cutting back their benefits.”
Carter himself put it this way on the organization’s website: “Habitat has successfully removed the stigma of charity by substituting it with a sense of partnership.”
“A hot meal is great today, but you’ll need one tomorrow, and one of the things he liked about Habitat is it was not a handout,” says Mary Wharton, who got to know the former president while filming her 2020 documentary, “Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President,” which chronicles the political support Carter received from musician friends such as the Allman Brothers and Bob Dylan.
“The beneficiaries of these homes have to work alongside you often, which creates a path to self-reliance,” she says. “That resonated a lot with him. It was that mix of his deep faith and his background as a military man.”
In her film, Wharton captures country stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood expressing awe at Carter’s drive while helping him during a Carter Work Project week in Nashville. The couple have been regular volunteers with Habitat for more than a decade.
Wharton says that for all of Carter’s folksy demeanor, he was fiercely focused when it came to building homes for the poor. Carter instituted a policy that there would be no breaks for chit-chat, autographs, or selfies until the day was done.
He was even competitive. Brooks comments on Carter’s taskmaster style in the movie, noting he would casually tell his team that it didn’t matter how fast they moved “as long as our house gets done first.”
His son James Earl “Chip” Carter III told Wharton that his father cast a long shadow. Carter was the man who would always catch more fish than anyone else, a drive that extended to all aspects of his life, including Habitat.
“Chip said, ‘If you try and follow in those footsteps, you fall in, they’re too big,’ ” Wharton says. “When I met him, I was expecting him to be my Southern grandfather, a Mister Rogers type. But with all things, he gets to the point.”
Brinkley witnessed that same unflinching resolve firsthand when he brought along college students to build a home with Carter years ago. The former president led through hard work and kept a watchful eye out for anyone slacking off.
Although the arrival of night would bring smiles and laughs and a shared catfish or chicken dinner, the day was all business. “Carter had no tolerance for slackers,” Brinkley says. “He’d notice someone who instead of working seemed to going out constantly to get the group pizza or something like that. He had a standard for work, and he’d say, ‘Here I am, you guys match me.’ “
Habitat CEO Reckford often had volunteers clamoring to be on the former president’s work team during those frenetic build weeks. He would always caution them.
“I’d say, ‘He’s a skilled carpenter and he knows his stuff, so if you want this, it’s an honor that comes with high expectation,’ ” Reckford says. “If things are going well, great. If they’re not, then you’d suddenly get a blue-eyed glint from that submarine commander. And trust me, you don’t want that.”
In Reckford’s book about Habitat, “Our Better Angels,” for which Carter wrote a foreword, Reckford details a work week in the Philippines in 1999. The humidity was crushing. Most of the team wanted to call it quits. But Carter thought otherwise.
“He walks into a house for an inspection but sees a toilet is missing,” says Reckford, retelling the tale. “He told the owner, ‘If I show you how to put in your toilet, will you help your son with his home?’ And there he goes, down on his knees, installing a toilet. Can you imagine another U.S. president doing that?”