More than 14,000 people have written to Jimmy Carter for his 99th birthday. The wishes, posted in a digital mosaic created by The Carter Center, come from around the world: an Ohio family thanks the 39th US president for being an example of “how to live”; a Georgia resident recalls shaking his hand during his run for governor; a man sends best wishes from Switzerland. There are notes from Ecuador and Costa Rica, Europe and Australia and from every corner of the United States. Many thank Carter for his humanitarian service. Others – a few famous, most not – share admiration or memories of brief encounters. Some say they love him.The messages’ renowned recipient – with a brief exception last Saturday, during a peanut festival – has largely stayed out of the public eye since opting seven months ago to start receiving home hospice care following a series of hospital stays. Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, has dementia, the non-profit they founded announced in May. The couple, married for 77 years, has been spending slow days – likely among his last, their closest relatives acknowledge – together at their home in the southwest Georgia city of Plains, population: 700-ish.Here, the former president – who years after his White House term won a Nobel Peace Prize and launched a global charge to eradicate a painful disease – is known simply as “Mr. Jimmy.”And here, the small, middle-of-nowhere town Carter helped put on the map is also perhaps the center of his legacy, where hundreds of annual visitors exchange stories with residents who know him not as the former commander-in-chief but as the man who sat by a friend’s bedside during a difficult illness, who sent an encouraging note when a new restaurant owner’s business slowed and who regularly spoke about his faith on Sundays in his longtime church.”He was only president for four years. He was governor for four years. But he was a resident of Plains, Georgia, for 99,” his grandson, Jason Carter, told CNN….
Read the full article here
