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First Lady from Plains
First Lady from Plains
First Lady from Plains
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First Lady from Plains

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First Lady from Plains, first published in 1984, is Rosalynn’s Carter’s autobiography, covering her life from her childhood in Plains, Georgia, through her time as First Lady. It is “a readable, lively and revealing account of the Carters and their remarkable journey from rural Georgia to the White House in a span of ten years” (The New York Times).
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 1, 1994
ISBN9781610751551
First Lady from Plains

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
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    This audio book was just as good as the memories of her husband. I was't sure how I'd take to hearing about putting on dinner parties in the Gerogia Governors' mansion, but Mrs. Carter explains it in an amusing way, that only more makes me wish that Jimmy hadn't had such a failed economic policy and would have been able to beat Regan so I could have experienced a real family of the people. From starting the story to them having to fix the pipes in their Plains, GA home themselves the night before Jimmy's inauguration, to their famous Camp David Summit where Israel and Egypt signed a lasting peace deal, to the Iran contra. She's a real winner, sticking by her man when no one else would, and giving him a real what for when everyone else told him his butt didn't stink. And still doing monthly household budget meetings even when the White House staff could have taken care of everything for them.I felt I could hear Suzanne telling these stories about me someday, if only Michigan was ready for a state senator who respected individual liberty?

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First Lady from Plains - Rosalynn Carter

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Preface 1994

Much has happened since I wrote First Lady from Plains. Jimmy and I had been home from the White House for only a few years then, the Carter Center was just beginning to take shape, and we were becoming adjusted to living out of the spotlight—to a degree. The wonder of being private citizens in Plains again was appealing and satisfying.

But what we learned after returning home was that because Jimmy had been President, we still had the resources, experts we could call upon for help in almost any endeavor we chose. That led to a lot of questions. Do we use that influence? How do we use that influence? What are our obligations? What are our opportunities? Are we in a position to do some things that others are not able to do? Can we be helpful in solving some of the problems that affect people’s lives? How will we accomplish the tasks that we might choose?

We would have the Carter Center in Atlanta as a forum from which to pursue issues that were important to us. We had been relieved of official responsibilities in Washington four years earlier than anticipated, which left us with time. Our children were all gone from home. And, we were reasonably young.

Ten years have passed since I wrote the epilogue of my book. Our lives are now as filled, or more filled, than they have ever been. The Carter Center has become more than we could have envisioned. We have an array of programs that span several continents, and we travel often to stay in touch with them.

Our main focus is on conflict resolution and human rights in the broadest sense. This includes health, food production, housing, as well as the political freedoms usually associated with human rights. When people live in poverty and are hungry, or sick, or without homes, and when they suffer political oppression, they tend to rebel against their governments, leading to conflict.

Most of our efforts have been among people of the developing world, trying to overcome some of the obstacles to a good, productive, and peaceful life. The Task Force on Child Survival and Development, located at the Carter Center, is responsible for immunizing all children in the developing world and for carrying out the recommendations for health care of the United Nations Conference on Children. This includes screening and treating for parasitic worms and working with mothers to educate them about basic sanitation and nutrition.

Among other health programs, we are working to eradicate a terrible disease called Guinea Worm, caused by a microorganism found in unclean drinking water. It is prevalent in nineteen countries in Africa, and also in Pakistan and India. We expect to completely eradicate this disease by 1996.

We are also teaching farmers how to increase their food production, interceding with heads of state in human-rights violations, and monitoring elections in an effort to promote democracy.

Interestingly, we have found that fair and free elections are a good way to resolve or prevent armed conflicts. Jimmy says politics is the art of self-delusion. Often when political opponents in a country refuse to sit down at the negotiating table, they will agree to an election, each confident that if the election is "fair and free, and everybody knows me, then I will surely win!"

With most of our efforts overseas, Jimmy was becoming restless about our apparent lack of concern about the problems at home, particularly those in the inner cities of our country. One day when we were at the Carter Center, he came into my office and said, Guess what we’re going to do. "What else?" I asked. We’re going to solve all the human problems in Atlanta. We don’t take on small tasks!

Of course, we haven’t solved all the problems of the inner city of Atlanta, but we have a massive program underway called The Atlanta Project (TAP). We are working in a section of the city with a population of 500,000 people, identified as most in need by using two criteria: the number of pregnant teenagers and the number of single-parent families. There are twenty high schools in the area, so we have divided the area into twenty clusters to make it more manageable. TAP encompasses health, education, housing, community development, economic development, and public safety.

What is different about this program is that we have spent hundreds of hours, along with many volunteers, in the clusters asking people what they need and letting them know that we will help them get these things to make their lives better.

Our experience with Habitat for Humanity helped us decide that similar programs might be the solution to some of the problems that plague poor people in our country. In Habitat we build houses for people in need, but those who get the houses have to work on them, and they have to pay for them. Owning the homes changes their lives. We have seen it happen over and over again. Habitat homeowners gain not only a home, but also a sense of pride, of self-esteem, of success—often for the first time in their lives. Couldn’t this happen in other areas if people work to help solve their own problems? It was worth a try.

We began talking about TAP in November of 1991. To date, we have had some successes, we have tried some things that didn’t work—and we have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. We are seeing leaders emerge among the residents of the poverty areas and people in the clusters coming together in an effort to deal with the problems they face.

One of the major accomplishments of TAP is that it has brought together the two Atlantas: the Atlanta that consists of the well-to-do, fortunate people, who usually make all the decisions, and the other Atlanta that consists of the unfortunate. We have had tremendous support from the entire Atlanta community. Each cluster now has a corporate partner and a university partner with wonderful friendships developing and assistance being offered. And thousands of volunteers busy working together to make things happen.

One of the most important things the people in the clusters wanted was good health care for their children. So one weekend, with more than seven thousand volunteers, almost half from among inner-city residents, we went from door to door and located every child five years of age and under. Among other questions, we asked if they had been immunized. This resulted in seventeen thousand preschool children either receiving free shots or having their vaccination records confirmed. As a continuation of that project, with many more volunteers, we helped the county health officials computerize their records, most of which had been on three-by-five-inch cards. Now, the health care workers can track the children and be sure that they get not only their remaining immunizations on time, but also their primary health care.

As word has spread about our program, we have had to open an office to handle the requests from other cities for information about starting similar community programs. The Atlanta Project has now become the America Project.

I have had a longtime interest in mental health issues and in childhood immunization and have been able to continue my efforts in both areas. We have a mental health program at the Carter Center, with a task force of prominent citizens who work with me to help improve the lives of those suffering from mental illnesses. Together with leaders of almost sixty mental health organizations, we are trying to get adequate benefits for mental illnesses included in a national health care plan. Over the last few months I have been working with Betty Ford on this issue. Betty’s major area of concern is in alcohol and substance addiction, so we make a good team. Jimmy and I have become friends with Gerald and Betty Ford since we left the White House and enjoy our association with them.

When we left the White House in 1981, we thought that preventable childhood diseases were pretty much under control. I worked with Betty Bumpers, wife of U.S. Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, on this issue for years—first when our husbands were governors, and then when we were in Washington. When Jimmy was elected President, only seventeen states required children to be immunized by school age. With Betty’s persistent help, together with the secretary of Health and Human Services, we had been able to get this required in all fifty states. There was even one week toward the end of Jimmy’s term when there were no measles cases reported in the United States. We celebrated. You can imagine my chagrin when in 1989 I began to read about epidemics of measles in our country. I called Betty, whom I had not seen for years, to see if she wanted to work on measles for a third time. Then I left for Africa with Jimmy to see about one of our programs. When I returned, Betty had already set up an office, a secretary, a telephone, and a fax machine. We were in business.

We organized a program called Every Child By Two and are now working to get children immunized by that appropriate age. We do a good job in our country immunizing school-age children (97 percent), but we immunize less than half by age two. Most of the ones who died in the 1989–91 epidemics were babies.

A major hurdle in our efforts is finding the very young children. We have formed a coalition of many partners—federal, state, and local health officials, health care professionals, individuals, service organizations, foundations, and businesses—to try to get the number of little children immunized in all our states up to, or close to, that of school-age children. In addition, we are working on a long-range plan to develop a system that registers and tracks babies to ensure that they are immunized at the appropriate times. Betty and I have agreed that we have to do it right this time. We’re getting too old to work on this program a fourth time!

Our efforts with Habitat continue. Jimmy and I spend one week each year with other volunteers building homes for poor people in need. This is our eleventh year, and we will be building houses on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. Since it is miles from any city, we will be sleeping in tents, bathing in water heated by the sun. It will be quite an experience!

My newest venture, the Rosalynn Carter Institute (RCI) at Georgia Southwestern College in Americus, Georgia, deals with the burdens and the rewards of caregiving. The Institute’s purpose is to help family and professional caregivers who care for mentally or physically disabled people or the elderly. We conducted an extensive survey in which students and professional caregivers called on family caregivers to determine their needs, and then students and family caregivers went together to interview the professionals. From the information gathered, we have developed helpful recommendations for both groups and are now in the process of implementing them. This includes establishing training courses to provide knowledge and skills for the caregivers in our area, developing support groups, dealing with burnout, and providing respite. A technical book is being written for use in medical schools, and caregiving courses are being developed for use in disciplines such as nursing, psychology, counseling, social work, and education. Also, I am writing a book for the informal or family caregiver. I believe it will be helpful to those who dedicate so much of their time to caring for a loved one who is disabled.

Our family is fine, though enlarged since I wrote this book; we now have nine grandchildren who are a joy. Amy is an art student in graduate school, working on her M.F.A. degree.

Plains is still special to us. We do a lot of things, go a lot of places, but Plains is home, and we always come home—whether from the Navy in our very early married years, the governor’s mansion, the White House, or from Africa to view a project. Our friends are here and we are just Jimmy and Rosalynn to them, as though we have never been gone. It is refreshing.

We look back on our time in the White House with pleasure and satisfaction. It was an interesting, exciting, productive, sometimes difficult, and always challenging time for us. It provided us with opportunities we never dreamed we would have. What the future holds we can only guess. But we look forward to it with great anticipation.

April 1994

Prologue

It is early, too early, when we wake up on January 20, 1977, in Blair House the morning Jimmy is to be sworn in as the thirty-ninth President of the United States. It’s dark outside and bone-chilling cold, so cold that the outdoor concert on the Mall last night had to be canceled for fear the mouthpieces of the instruments would stick to the musicians’ mouths. In Union Station, the doors on a train filled with people coming to the inauguration froze shut and couldn’t be thawed open for several hours.

Now, at 5:30 A.M., Jimmy and I can see the White House dimly across the street, a few lights twinkling in the morning dawn. Already two hundred soldiers are at work along Pennsylvania Avenue, using jackhammers to break up the ice on the sidewalks in preparation for the inaugural parade.

I look at Jimmy, the President-elect, the man for whom the Kennedy Center was filled just last night with some of America’s greatest artists performing for him, the one person who would command all the world’s attention today. He is still the same person who spent yesterday morning with me, mopping up the garage in Plains after the hot-water pipes burst from the cold, the same son who had called Miss Lillian later to admit the motorcade had forgotten to pick her up on the way to the airport. Stay right there, he told her. We’ll send someone for you.

This morning we are all safely in Washington somewhere, even Misty Malarky Ying Yang, Amy’s cat, who had crawled all over the plane on the flight from Plains. Jimmy, Amy, and I have an early breakfast in our bathrobes in the Blair House bedroom. While Jimmy works on his inaugural address, listening to it for the last time on his tape recorder, I fuss over my hair. I had a haircut and a permanent just before we came to Washington, and my hair feels strange . . . and much too short and curly. In a futile attempt to make it look longer, I roll it on big curlers, but it still comes out just as short. It seems incredible that the day my husband is to be sworn in as President, what worries me most is my hair!

And the cold. Jimmy asked me a few days ago what I thought about walking instead of riding from the Capitol to the White House after the inauguration. The Secret Service, he told me, had cleared it if there was no publicity and absolutely no one knew about it ahead of time. Thomas Jefferson had walked to the Capitol for his inauguration, and I thought it was a wonderful idea, a symbol of the open and accessible atmosphere Jimmy hoped to return to the presidency. Now, suddenly, I’m not so sure. Will Amy, at age nine, be able to make it all the way in the cold? Will I have to get in the car and let Jimmy walk without me? And what about Chip’s wife, Caron, who is eight months pregnant? But it’s too late for second thoughts. It’s time to dress, and warmly. For good luck, I put three small crosses on the gold chain around my neck, one each for Amy, our grandson, Jason, and the new grandbaby yet to be born. For warmth, I put on my boots and my knee-length knit underwear. It doesn’t seem like the most stylish way to dress for your husband’s inauguration, and I laugh at myself a little as I bundle up, but I’m determined to enjoy this day, which may be the most important one of my life, without my teeth chattering.

As the day begins to unfold, I soon forget completely about my hair and almost about the cold. The significance of the events becomes far more important and humbling. Chip, who had been working with the inaugural committee in Washington since the election, had been to several churches in the city and had picked the First Baptist Church as the one he thought we would like to join. Now we assemble there with our family, the Mondales, and several of the Cabinet and staff members for a private prayer service. The Reverend Nelson Price, a special friend from Georgia, invokes the words of President John Adams, words that are inscribed on a White House mantel: I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof. The thoughts Nelson borrowed from Thomas Jefferson are just as pertinent to what Jimmy hopes to bring to his presidency: Our generation needs persons with hearts like unto that of James Monroe, who was so honest that if you turned his soul inside out, there would not be a spot on it.

It’s now Jimmy’s turn to live wisely under the White House roof, to try to keep his soul as spotless as James Monroe’s, to become one of the leaders children will read about in history books. How I wish his father could have been here to see him take the oath of office—my father as well. All these thoughts and more are milling around in my head as I ride in the limousine from the White House, where we all gathered briefly, to the Capitol. Jimmy rides with President Ford and I follow with Mrs. Ford. I’m sure her thoughts are as deep and varied as mine, but like most people, we do not express them. Instead we chat, mostly about Camp David, where the Fords had just spent their last weekend. The food is so delicious there, Mrs. Ford tells me, that she is going to have to go on a diet.

We are met at the Capitol and taken to a small waiting room, where I talk with Happy Rockefeller, Betty Ford, and Joan Mondale. I feel numb. All that Jimmy and I have worked for so hard is about to become a reality. Then it is time, and Joan Mondale and I walk down the aisle between the dignitaries and our families to take our positions on the presidential platform. Dimly I hear applause from the crowd. This is the moment I have anticipated so long, but all I can do is go through the motions. Then it is President Ford’s turn to make his way down the aisle, and I tremble slightly as the Marine Band strikes up Ruffles and Flourishes and Hail to the Chief. The next time they play it, it will be for Jimmy.

As the sound of the brass, the vastness of the crowd, and the American flags snapping in the cold wind contribute to the overwhelming sense of pageantry, Amy slips over onto my lap. She is used to big crowds and had been to Jimmy’s inauguration as governor of Georgia, but she seems awed by the scene. She is old enough to know what is going on, though, and I am thankful for her presence. She comforts me at this moment as much as I comfort her.

The band plays the Navy Hymn, one of Jimmy’s favorites from his days at the Naval Academy, and more memories stir . . . of our Navy days and my sentimental visits with Jimmy to the chapel at Annapolis, when I was young and filled with the anticipation of an exciting and unknown future. The hymn also reminds me of John Kennedy, not only of the excitement and promise he brought to our country, but of his funeral as well, when that excitement was extinguished too soon. I look out at the sea of faces on all sides, as far as the eye can see, and feel the air of expectancy and hope and promise in the crowd. I also feel an awesome responsibility now that Jimmy is about to be President. All these people. And we are responsible to them, and for them.

Jimmy appears, and a sudden hush falls over the crowd before an explosion of applause and cheers. We love you, Jimmy, someone yells. Then another: God be with you, Jimmy. I stand to join him at the front of the platform and hold the Bible his mother gave him a few years ago while he takes the oath of office. It is a moment I will never forget. I look right at him, the same person I’ve looked at so long, and smile, thinking what a wonderful thing this is for our country, what a good, honest, and capable man we are getting for our President, a man who is going to work hard and wisely for all the people of the country, not just the elite few. I have never felt so proud.

Even the words of his inaugural address, one of the shortest in American history, sound fresh and new to me, though I have heard and read them many times before. We studied all the inaugural addresses of past presidents in our den in Plains, and I read Jimmy’s drafts over and over as he was writing them, surrounded by bits and scraps of paper. I even made a small contribution, suggesting that he add the strengthening of the American family as one of his goals for the presidency. Now these words, so familiar and yet so new, bring tears not only to my eyes, but to the eyes of many around us as well. And the applause of the crowd takes the frost out of the air as he finishes. Jimmy Carter has been inaugurated, and the celebration begins.

With Jimmy’s inaugural, we hoped to set a tone for an open, inclusive administration, one that would focus on all kinds of people, and to revive some of the older, simpler traditions of the presidency that had gotten lost in more recent administrations. We knew that George Washington, a farmer and surveyor, had discouraged royal trappings and customs for the American presidency from the very beginning. And other presidents gave us glimpses of a basic plainness of style that fit closely our American character: Thomas Jefferson waiting his turn for lunch on his inauguration day; Eleanor Roosevelt serving hot dogs to the king and queen of England; Harry Truman washing out his own socks; and Abraham Lincoln’s letter to a child who wanted him to grow a beard.

We planned a simple inauguration, a people’s inauguration, so that everyone who came would find something fun or meaningful to do. We had met and spoken to and spent the night with and shaken hands with so many friends from one end of the country to the other, and we wanted them all to join in the celebration and to share the victory. We wanted all 216 million Americans to feel comfortable in Washington. But not all at once! And not at all in the style of Andrew Jackson’s famous inaugural, when people had to sleep on pool tables after all the hotel rooms were full, often with five to a bed. One journalist noted that at Jackson’s inauguration in 1829, orange punch by barrels full was made, but as the waiters opened the door to bring it out, a rush would be made, the glasses broken, the pails of liquor upset, and the most painful confusion prevailed . . . it was mortifying to see men, with boots heavy with mud standing on the damask covered chairs, from their eagerness to get a sight of the President.

Though we felt a kinship with Andrew Jackson, who saw himself as a direct representative of the people, we did not want to repeat the story of his inauguration!

So we planned all kinds of activities in different places around Washington: Some two hundred different musical events were scheduled—brass concerts, classical music, jazz festivals, organ recitals, country and western music, and folk music from all over the world. There were prayer meetings and poetry readings, parades and plays, films and fireworks. There were twelve events especially for children, a half-dozen free tours of the city, and countless parties and receptions. And that was only the official list. Unofficially, there was everything from the first public showing of the art of George Meany to a quiet little reception instigated by Jimmy for all living recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The biggest event of all was the inaugural parade. After a light lunch at the Capitol following the inauguration, we climb into the waiting limousines and drive outside the grounds in perfect formation. Then the cars stop, to the great surprise of everyone but the Secret Service and our family. The word spreads down the parade route. He’s out of the car! people yell. They’re out of the car! And we are out of the cars and start to walk, Jeff and Annette, Jack carrying Jason on his shoulders, and his wife, Judy, Chip and Caron, and Amy skipping along sometimes with Jimmy and me, sometimes with the boys, bringing the whole parade to a halt when she stops for Chip to tie her dangling shoelaces.

And we keep walking and waving, smiling and laughing, warm as we go through the snow and ice in the subfreezing temperature. All along Pennsylvania Avenue are people wearing green and white woolen Carter hats, left over from the primaries in New Hampshire and Wisconsin, people bundled up with scarves or hats or blankets, people holding signs and cheering. There are many familiar faces in the crowd: some who had ridden the Peanut Special train from home, many who had campaigned for us everywhere. I didn’t realize the impact the walk would have until we stepped onto the street and began to hear all those voices. Just as we want to be close to the people, they want to be close to us. Hello, Jimmy. Hello, Rosalynn, they call again and again. Good luck, God bless you. Some are crying, standing in the cold with tears rolling down their cheeks. I can’t feel the cold at all.

We reach the reviewing stand, and we discover that the cold is still with us. Though it is supposedly a solar booth, something has happened to the sun this day and the booth’s heater doesn’t work. As the parade begins to pass, we forget the cold again, and I feel especially warmed by Senator Hubert Humphrey, the grand marshal of the parade and someone I love. Entry after entry reminds us of the vastness and diversity of our country, from the bands from every state to the enormous, helium-filled peanut carried by members of the Peanut Brigade at the end. We don’t realize how long we’ve been sitting or how chilled we really are until it’s time for us to make our way officially up the frozen driveway of Pennsylvania Avenue for the first time.

It is an overwhelming experience to walk through the front door of the White House and know it is going to be your home for the next four years. I had been to the White House several times before, as a tourist with the children; for dinner during a Governors’ Conference, when President Nixon advised me to always keep a diary; and for a short visit with Betty Ford after the election. As is customary, I had been given a book of photographs of the family living quarters, so I could plan which rooms should go to each child, and had had one quick tour, also customary, of the upstairs when the Fords were skiing in Vail during Christmas. I also know that by the time we walk into the White House, all our things will have been unpacked and put away by the staff, even my dresses will be hung in the closet. It is a tradition at the White House that until the outgoing President leaves the house to go to the inauguration of the incoming President, nothing is disturbed. During the inauguration, the old President’s things are removed and the new President’s put in place, so when the new family arrives they’re already settled. But right now, even with all those preparations, I am hardly feeling settled.

I am still numb from the whole experience of the day and what it really means. It is a heady feeling to hold the Bible while your husband takes the oath of office, to receive applause and cheers from the huge crowds, and to know that history will record everything you did that day.

I suddenly think about all the obligations and responsibilities we have just assumed. I am now in the White House as First Lady; I will live in the same rooms where Dolley Madison, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Eleanor Roosevelt lived. We are answerable to all the people—and indebted forever to so many whom we will never be able to repay.

As we walk through the White House door, fires are burning in the fireplaces and hot spiced tea is being served. And we are met, not by ambassadors or Cabinet members, but by homefolks, members of the Garden Club of Georgia who have come and filled the White House with flowers trucked in from home.

Here greeting us are the people who know us best, who have confidence that we will do whatever needs to be done. I try to thank them for being here, for caring about us, and for the beautiful flowers in every room. But I don’t think they grasp the significance of what their presence here at this moment means. For in spite of the cheers of the crowd, in spite of the fact that Jimmy is now officially President of the United States and I am now First Lady, they remind us of who we really are and where we come from. And though we face extraordinary responsibilities and will live a life we never even dreamed of, we are first and always Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter from Plains, Georgia.

CHAPTER 1

The Early Years

Jimmy and I grew up three years and three miles apart, he on a farm in the country, and I, along with my two younger brothers, Jerry and Murray, and my much younger sister, Allethea, in a simple white frame house in the middle of Plains. The red clay soil is very fertile in southern Georgia, and my mother grew zinnias, petunias, hollyhocks, crepe myrtle, and what seemed like hundreds of other flowers in carefully tended beds on the street side of our house; the backyard held our vegetable garden and lots of trees—fig, pear, pecan, and wild cherry, and pomegranate bushes and a scuppernong arbor. I remember very well that we had rosebushes too, because once I fell out of the sitting room window and landed in one of them. I still have the scar on my chin to remind me.

Our backyard seemed enormous. At its edge was a wood-pile for the cookstove and coal for burning in the fireplaces. There was a smokehouse, a chicken house filled with chickens, and at one time a rabbit pen, though we finally had to get rid of the rabbits because they kept multiplying and we ran out of room for them. We also had a barn for the milk cow and a few pigs, and another barn for the mules my father used on our nearby farm. Behind the barns was someone else’s field. Every spring the rains formed a pond in it, and we could hear the loud chirping of the frogs from our porch at night.

Dust was a prominent part of our life. Billows of red dust engulfed us every time a car passed or the wind blew. The only paved road in town was the main highway that went to Americus. We lived on a heavily traveled dirt road, and the dust would settle on the front porch and seep into the house. There was no way to keep it out. The doors and windows had to be open in the spring, summer, and fall because of the heat and humidity.

Plains was very small, only one square mile with a population of about six hundred. Everyone in town knew everyone else, which was very nice when there was trouble or someone was sick, or when there was a death in the family. There was no such thing as privacy, though; everyone knew everyone else’s business. But it was a good place and a good spirit to grow up in. We grieved with one another over the sad things and rejoiced together over the happy things. Collectively, we were secure and isolated from the outside world.

We had no movie theater, no library, no recreation center, in Plains. Occasionally someone would open a restaurant, but it would never last very long. The social life of the community revolved around the churches. My grandmother Murray was Lutheran, my grandfather Baptist, and my parents Methodist. I went to all three churches—almost every time the doors opened, it seemed—to Sunday school and regular Sunday church service, to prayer meeting, Methodist League, Baptist Girls Auxiliary, and Bible school. We regularly went to family nights at the church and sometimes ate dinner outdoors on the church grounds, and looked forward eagerly to one of the big events of the year, the revival meeting. For a whole week during the summer there would be preaching morning and night, and we never missed a service. We sang and prayed, and the preachers always came to our house for a meal.

God was a real presence in my life, especially in those revival times. We were taught to love Him and felt very much the necessity and desire to live the kind of life He would have us live, to love one another and be kind to and help those who needed help, and to be good. But we were also taught to fear God, and though I loved Him, I was afraid of displeasing Him all my young life. I didn’t think about Him as a forgiving God but as a punishing God, and I was afraid even to have a bad thought. I thought that if we were good He would love us, but if we weren’t, He wouldn’t.

The other focal point of our community was our school. We were very proud of our school, which had less than a hundred and fifty students in eleven grades, and the parents participated in all school activities. Like other southern towns then, we had a school for blacks and a separate school for whites; an invisible barrier separated the white community from the black community, and few people crossed it. Miss Lillian, Jimmy’s mother, was one of the exceptions. She was a registered nurse, and no matter who was sick, black or white, she was there. Always. People didn’t have money for nurses or even doctors much of the time, and this was before we had penicillin or other antibiotics. People got sick at home and died at home. And Miss Lillian was always there. She was a wonderful person, and the whole community had great respect for her. My parents even named my sister, Lillian Allethea, after her.

My father, Wilburn Edgar Smith, was a tall, handsome man with dark, curly hair. He drove the school bus, worked in one of the mercantile stores in town on weekends, owned an auto repair shop, and ran his farm on the outskirts of town. When I was a child we felt very fortunate because we always had a car. It was never a new one, but my father had a reputation of being able to fix any car so it would run like new. My mother, Frances Allethea Murray, whom everyone called Allie, was beautiful, with wavy brown hair and dark brown eyes to match. She met my father, who was nine years older, when she was in high school and he was driving the school bus. They didn’t marry, though, until she had finished college, graduating with a teacher’s diploma. The next year, on August 18, 1927, I was born and named Eleanor Rosalynn Smith after my mother’s mother, whose name was Rosa.

Times were hard then, not only for us but for everybody. My father lost his nest egg, one thousand dollars, when the Plains bank failed in 1926. And soon after my first brother was born in 1929, the stock market crashed in New York. As children, however, we were unaware of any hardship. We grew our own food and had good clothes. In school I often drew pictures of a dress I wanted, or I’d go to Americus, ten miles away, and copy dresses from the store windows (I’d never dare go inside) and my mother would make them for me. I thought I had the prettiest dresses in town, and my clothes were the envy of all my friends. When Ruth Carter, Jimmy’s sister, who was two years younger than I, became my best friend, I gave her the ones I had outgrown. Our family didn’t have much money, but neither did anyone else, so as far as we knew, we were well off.

There were literally no other girls in town my age. Ruth lived in the country, and I didn’t really know her until she started to school. So I played with my two brothers, Murray and Jerry, and the other boys who lived on our street. We played kick the can and cops and robbers and set up a play store in our barn, where somebody would clerk and others would buy things. We played out at night under the streetlights and climbed on the bales of cotton that lined the streets in the summer waiting to be shipped out on the railroad. When it got really hot, we hiked to Magnolia Springs, two miles out of town, and swam there in a cool, springwater pool. One of our favorite places was the railroad depot, which was close to my father’s garage. There were passengers arriving and others departing for unknown places away from Plains, and there were always freight trains switching boxcars and being loaded with watermelons, peanuts, cotton, or whatever produce the farmers had brought to town. Often the farmers would give us a watermelon from the huge piles of them on the ground. I never thought it was odd to be playing with boys. There just weren’t any girls, and I never had any trouble with the boys because I was always the oldest.

I also played by myself much of the time. I loved dolls, and my mother made clothes for them and taught me how to sew. I liked paper dolls too, and often I’d cut them out of old Sears Roebuck catalogues. I made quilt squares out of the scraps from Mother’s sewing, and she would stitch them together and make quilts. But more than anything, I liked to read. I read Heidi and Hans Brinker and Robinson Crusoe and dreamed about faraway

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