Philip Kurland, the longtime owner of the Plains Trading Post on Main Street, stands amid a sea of pins and memorabilia. Plains, Georgia, is the hometown of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who was buried there Thursday. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
Mike Derer / Mike Derer
PLAINS, Ga. – When Jimmy Carter left this whistle-stop farm town for college in 1942, he did not have plans to return. As a boy, Carter had dreamed of joining the Navy. He wanted to see the world.
And over the course of a century, he did. After his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy, Carter served aboard a submarine stationed in Pearl Harbor. In Iowa diners and New Hampshire town halls, he pitched his improbable bid for the presidency. From the White House, he shuttled between Cairo and Jerusalem to hold together a historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.
Carter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, built homes with Habitat for Humanity in Haiti, assisted with public health campaigns in Ghana and monitored elections in Panama.
Plains prepares for life without Carter
But Plains, a community of a few hundred with no stoplight, supermarket or gas station, kept tugging Carter back. And on Thursday, the man from Plains made a final trip home, so he could be buried near the modest ranch house he shared with his wife, Rosalynn, for more than six decades.
A condolence book and cotton wreath sits in a tent on former President Jimmy Carter’s boyhood farm in Archery, Ga on Wednesday, January 9, 2025. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
“Yes, they spent four years in the governor’s mansion and four years in the White House, but the other 92 years they spent at home in Plains, Georgia,” grandson Jason Carter said during a Thursday morning service filled with former presidents and other dignitaries at the National Cathedral in Washington.
Under a nearly full moon, the motorcade carrying this town’s most famous resident passed through the tiny strip of Main Street for the last time. Friends, neighbors and visitors lined the route, waving American flags as a military flyover thundered overhead.
People gather in downtown Plains, Ga to pay respect as the state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter concludes with a procession to the Carter residence for an interment ceremony. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
Sonia Galloway only met Carter once when he helped Habitat for Humanity build her new home in nearby Americus, but says he felt like a friend.
“It’s like he was family to every one of us in Americus and Plains,” Galloway says.
Much of Jimmy Carter’s Plains is now cared for by the National Park Service — and has been for years since the National Park Service created the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in the late eighties.
“They didn’t have to go off and become president and first lady of the United States. They still would have made a huge impact on Plains. And it starts small.”
Jennifer Hopkins, lead education ranger at the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park
The farm where Carter grew up outside town is frozen in the Great Depression, with a car battery-powered radio in the living room and a suspended metal bucket for a showerhead. At Plains High School, now the park headquarters, time stands still in a preserved classroom from the 1930s.
Downtown, the train depot that served as headquarters for Carter’s presidential campaigns is still wrapped in signs that declare in retro font, “Jimmy Carter for President.”
A family poses for a photo at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Campaign Headquarters in downtown Plains, Ga on Thursday, January 9, 2025. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
But until now, Carter’s presence has made this historic site a place of living history.
“He’s our neighbor,” says Philip Kurland, the longtime owner of the Plains Trading Post. “He’s the one that prays with us. He’s the one that shows up at every meeting.”
At Kurland’s store, where political enthusiasts can shop a sea of pins and memorabilia from campaigns long suspended, Kurland says it’s been jarring to watch politicians on TV claiming to really know Carter.
“We’re saying to ourselves, you might know the political Jimmy Carter, but we know the real Jimmy Carter,” he said.
Philip Kurland, the longtime owner of the Plains Trading Post on Main Street, stands amid a sea of pins and memorabilia from past campaigns. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
Even with Carter gone, Kurland says he thinks visitors will keep making the trek to this corner of Southwest Georgia.
“His spirit will always be here,” Kurland says. “He is our hero. Rosalynn, too. But let’s just face it, it’s just not going to be the same.”
“The Carters are Plains, and Plains is the Carters,” says Jennifer Hopkins, lead education ranger at what today is known as the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park.
How Plains shaped Carter, Georgia and the nation
More than a quaint relic of a bygone era, Hopkins says Plains helps tell a broader story about the arc of Georgia history in the 20th century.
The sun begins to set behind the presidential campaign headquaters of former President Jimmy Carter in his hometown of Plains, Ga. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
At Carter’s boyhood farm, which initially did not have electricity, Hopkins says Carter learned resourcefulness and also saw the impact of New Deal policies like the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Rural Electrification Act first hand.
“The early years of my life on the farm were full and enjoyable, isolated but not lonely,” Carter wrote in his memoir, “An Hour Before Daylight. “We always had enough to eat, no economic hardship, but no money to waste. We felt close to nature, close to members of our family, and close to God.”
“His spirit will always be here, He is our hero. Rosalynn, too. But let’s just face it, it’s just not going to be the same.”
Philip Kurland, the longtime owner of the Plains Trading Post on Main Street
And as the son of a segregationist who also counted the Black children of tenant farmers as his playmates, Plains shaped Carter’s views on race.
“I grew up in one of the families whose people could not forget that we had been conquered, while most of our neighbors were Black people whose grandparents had been liberated in the same conflict,” Carter wrote later. “Our two races, although inseparable in our daily lives, were kept apart by social custom, misinterpretation of Holy Scriptures, and the unchallenged law of the land as mandated by the United States Supreme Court.”
A high school JROTC color guard marches through Plains, Ga ahead of the final funeral ceremonies for former President Jimmy Carter on Thursday, January 9, 2025. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
In a eulogy for Carter at the National Cathedral, Andrew Young, the civil rights leader and Carter’s Ambassador to the United Nations, recalled being scared to drive through Plains during that time. He said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. considered the county sheriff one of the meanest men in the world.
“When I first met Jimmy Carter running for governor and said, ‘The only thing I know about Plains and Sumter County is Fred Chapell,’ and he said, ‘Oh yes, he’s one of my good friends.’ and that was the last thing I wanted to hear,” Young said.
But Young called the South, “a place of miracles,” recounting Carter’s 1971 inauguration speech after he was elected governor, running a campaign that included racist overtures to segregationist Democrats.
“I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over,” Carter told the crowd, shocking some of his supporters. “Our people have already made this major and difficult decision. No poor, rural, weak or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job, or simple justice.”
True to their legacy
Hopkins says for years the park service has been in the unique position of interpreting history while the main character was not only still living, but right nearby.
“It’s definitely surreal,” Hopkins says. “The previous park I worked at, there were times I thought, if I could only talk to this person about what they wrote to figure out, ‘What did you really mean?’ For so long we’ve had that access. But then there’s also the added pressure. You want to do right by them. You want to make sure that you are being true to their legacy.”
Jennifer Hopkins, lead education ranger at what today is known as the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
For Terri Wooden, from Americus, that legacy is the message Carter instilled about this isolated region, “where there’s not a lot of resources and frankly not a lot of hope sometimes.”
“But to see someone who could come from meager beginnings and be able to be one of the most powerful people in the world, it says, ‘You’re not boxed in.”
Carter’s neighbors say a final goodbye
Wooden says she wanted to be here so she can tell her children and grandchildren about the man from Plains who became president.
Hopkins says she has been thinking about the impact a single person can have on their community.
“They didn’t have to go off and become President and First Lady of the United States. They still would have made a huge impact on Plains,” Hopkins says. “And it starts small.”
Downtown Plains, Ga on Wednesday, January 8, 2025. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
For Hopkins, the last week has been kind of like experiencing a death in the family. There is the initial shock, then running around to prepare. She says she has logged tens of thousands of steps a day.
“And then once those visitors go away and you have this moment of quiet, that’s when it truly sinks in and you have to take a pause,” Hopkins says. “You feel a little lost, but then after that, that’s when our training comes into play.”
Training to keep the past alive.
After a service at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Carter taught Sunday school for years, the former president was buried near the only home he owned — one that will eventually open to the public.
