How Jimmy Carter Helped Me Believe in the Impossible: Reflections on the Death of the Man From Plains (Exclusive)

When my husband and I set out for Plains, Ga., it was with trepidation. It’s not every day that you meet a United States president.

We nearly missed our flight out of New Jersey, an event that had never happened before, because though I am always late, my husband is always early.

Once we arrived in Atlanta, we had a problem with our credit card at the car rental. And later, I developed imposter syndrome as I sat in The Carter Center library, researching President Jimmy Carter’s archives on car safety.

I was visiting The Carter Center because my father had died in a crash with a distracted driver when I was 25 and he was 54, and we’d just discovered an unfinished bucket list he’d left behind. Item six was “talk with the President.”

On my dad’s list of 60 goals, which I decided to see through, he hadn’t written that he hoped to “meet” a president. Or even see a president. No, at age 29, the year I was born, my father decided that he hoped to talk with a president — strike that, he hoped to “talk with THE president.”

It was 1978 then, and Jimmy Carter was president.

He was also the only former president whose foundation had answered my email.

Related: Jimmy Carter Once Answered My Letter in College. The Lesson He Taught Me Changed My Perspective (Exclusive)

But at every turn of this trip, it seemed, I came up against more and more obstacles. Even the hotel we’d been advised to book — the one that guaranteed entry at President Carter’s Sunday school in Plains, where he’d taught 35 Sundays a year since leaving office in 1980 — was sold out. His lessons could attract as many as 500, from all over the country. So there was still a chance we might fly home having not even glimpsed a president.

I assume my father believed he could do this because for a short time during Carter’s presidency, he accepted phone calls from everyday Americans. In October 1979, National Public Radio collected questions from the public, and then called Americans in their homes with President Carter on the line, live from the Oval Office. Here’s how he responded to a woman who complained that the media should use a better title than “Mr.” when addressing him:

"When Washington became the first president, there was a move made to give him some sort of title, and he objected to this. And there was some doubt about how he should be addressed during his term of office, and also John Adams. When Thomas Jefferson became president, he insisted that everyone call him ‘Mr. Jefferson.’

"And so, I don't have any objection to that. The president ought not to be honored any more than just being able to hold the office, and so ‘President Carter’ or ‘Mr. President’ is also very good. And when I drive down the streets — for instance, recently in Tampa for a town hall meeting — and the children and everybody yell ‘Hi, Jimmy,’ I also am thrilled by the friendship. But I think ‘Mr. Carter’ or ‘President Carter’ are both appropriate."

Jimmy Carter on NPR's 'Ask the President' in 1979

On Carter’s Inauguration Day, he walked the streets of D.C., as opposed to riding with the Secret Service — something Thomas Jefferson was the first to do, and something Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump would repeat, some 30 years later.

Jimmy Carter was our country’s most accessible president.

But I hadn’t realized this yet, sitting in The Carter Center’s library archives, wondering how the heck I’d get this done.

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After a tour of The Carter Center, I begged my tired husband to climb Stone Mountain, a spot where my parents had taken photos in 1974 — my mom was an alumna of University of Georgia and showing my father around. Because our climb took so long, we didn’t arrive at our second-choice hotel until 11 p.m.

At the front desk, we ran into Arthur Milnes, a Jimmy Carter biographer. He had been to Plains 20 times for Carter’s lessons. He seemed to know the innkeeper well.

Carter wrote 32 books in his lifetime. I’d just seen them at The Carter Center. But he also had a good number written about him. And though Milnes was Canadian, he was Carter's biggest fan.

Related: The Night Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Slept Over (Exclusive)

We soon found ourselves in a discussion with Milnes in the hotel parking lot — again, our second choice — and three hours later he was inviting us to his room for wine. He said he assumed Jimmy Carter had my phone number, that he knew we were there.

“Plains only has 500 citizens,” Milnes reminded us. “I bet he’ll invite you to dinner.”

He’d also told us he’d been on the phone with The New York Times that day and he’d met several other U.S. presidents. Some had planted trees in his backyard.

We weren’t in Kansas anymore.

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The next day we toured Carter’s boyhood home, a farm in as-close-as-they-could-get-to its original condition. The home was sprinkled with speakers through which Carter’s voice lilts, playing into eternity. As a young man, Jimmy Carter sold 20 bags of peanuts in town every day. He was never at a loss for work on the farm, and developed such a successful business that by age 9 he was able to buy four apartments and collect rent!

Plains and Archery, where Carter grew up, are small towns. But it was just this experience that likely established the love of people that brought him to the White House.

And to 35 Sunday school lessons a year, for 40 years.

Related: All About Jimmy Carter’s Humble Life Before Politics, Which Set the Stage for His Decades of Public Service

By the time we arrived at Maranatha Baptist Church on Sunday, Aug. 27, 2017, most people had told me “talk with the president” was the most impossible task my dad dreamt up. But my dad wasn’t just a dreamer. He was resourceful. Mick Carney would have known that when it came to this president, “impossible” was open to interpretation.

As we sat in the pew just behind Carter’s (a friend had ensured at the last minute that we’d have seats), we listened as President Carter taught, inspired not only by the Bible, but by his own life. These were the highlights:

"“The point to be made today is that what decisions we’ve made up till now are really not what will shape our lives. It’s what decisions we make from now until the end of our life. This morning it’s a troubling thing for every one of us to decide, from now on, this is the kind of person I want to be. … And every one of us has a partner who loves us, and puts our interests first, and who knows everything and can do anything. And we have constant access to God.”
"

Jimmy Carter at Sunday School on Aug. 27, 2017

Afterward, we posed for a photo with Mr. Carter, but I also got to shake his hand — which likely shook more hands than any other president’s. His hand was larger and softer than I’d imagined.

“Sir, my father wrote on his bucket list that he hoped to meet you, and I’m here to check that off for him today,” I blurted out.

We’d been warned by the church’s MC not to talk to the president. We were told he didn’t have time to speak, as there were hundreds of us.

“Oh,” President Carter said. “Very good!”

I told him how we had met his biographer Arthur Milnes at the hotel, and that Art was wonderful.

“Come back down and see us again,” President Carter said.

Today, seven years later, we are still friends with Carter biographer Arthur Milnes. I’ve gone to visit him in Canada (a trip in which he tried to introduce me to President Bill Clinton!), and my husband and I call him “Uncle Art.”

Art helped me write a letter to the pope, when it was time to check that off my dad’s list (my dad didn’t just want to write to the pope, he wanted to “correspond” with him — I received a letter back!).

Art helped me when I was ready to pitch my book idea, about completing my dad’s list, to agents. He helped me when I needed someone to blurb my book, once it was published. He helped me when I was asked to discuss the book on NPR, as Jimmy Carter had once done. And like his hero, the 39th president, Art was just a phone call away throughout my book tour.

President Carter held true to his word. I did see him again. At his book signing in New York, a year later. And he responded to my thank-you note from the first meeting, and again when I sent my published book — despite being on hospice.

When I reflect on Carter’s Sunday school lesson, now that the Nobel Peace Prize winner will soon be laid to rest, I can’t help but be inspired by his message that day.

Jimmy Carter exemplified the idea of shaping one’s own life. It was a life my father also got to live, because he was brave enough to write down his dreams.

Related: Jimmy Carter's Presidency Was Cut Short by Crisis, but His Post-White House Life Made Him an Icon

As I ponder what the future holds for our country, one with “inherent greatness,” as Carter wrote in his first book, Why Not the Best?, I think about the advice he gave in his Nobel Peace Prize speech: “The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice.”

I choose to pursue “impossible” dreams, as I complete my own bucket list, inspired by my dad’s. I choose to shape my own life, to decide, as Jimmy Carter said, what kind of person I want to be. With God’s help, of course. Because we all have constant access to God.

And we are all Americans, led by a shared dream. Led by one person, who, according to our forefathers, should always be addressed as simply “Mr.” or “Ms.”

Who might have an origin as common as a peanut farm in Georgia.

Laura Carney is the best-selling author of My Father's List, available wherever books are sold.

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