Almost 50 years ago, my eldest sister was an undergraduate at The College of Charleston in South Carolina.
She was a teenager from Mississippi who decided on doing something which was not usually done by members of our family: she became politically active and worked with the Jimmy Carter for President campaign in the state.
The peanut farmer and Navy veteran carried South Carolina by 10 percentage points, one of a number of Southern States Carter won on his way to becoming the 39th President of the United States.
To this day, my sister keeps a photo signed by the former President, saying, “Without you, we wouldn’t have won South Carolina.”
Jimmy Carter has been called many things over the years, including “technocrat,” and “one-term President.”
But our family regards him as a decent man who may have been too honest to be President. He didn’t engage in the usual Washington political games which some of his predecessors were only too adept at playing.
After his Presidency, he gave three and a half decades of his time and efforts to Habitat for Humanity, spending a week with a group of Georgians rehabbing a tenement house in Manhattan. He did annual work projects for years, leading volunteers in both rehabilitations and in full builds of houses all over the U.S., changing lives and giving opportunities to others.
He will be truly missed for his efforts fighting poverty, racism, and human rights abuses.
Godspeed, Mr. President.