Jimmy Carter’s impact felt in Boys and Girls clubs across Southwest Ga - WALB

PLAINS, Ga. (WRBL) — If you want to see the good work that President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, have done, all you need to do is look across from their Plains home. On Waymon Street, not far from the Carter compound, is the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Boys and Girls Club. This club was built in 1999. And President and Rosalynn Carter had a path from their home to this club when it was under construction. They also used it when they would volunteer at the club. And like many Habitat for Humanity houses they have helped build, the Carters literally put hammer to nail here. It was renovated in 2019 and rededicated in 2020 just before the pandemic hit. It serves about 20 boys and girls here in Plains. It is operated by the Boys and Girls Club of Albany – one of nine facilities that the organization runs. There are only two Boys and Girls Clubs in the nation that bare the name of a former president. The Herbert Hoover Club in St. Louis and the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Unit here. “Not only did they help build the club, physically build it, but they were very engaged as members of the Board of Managers here, as well as our corporate board of directors — they serve as honorary chairs,” said Marvin Laster/the former president of the Boys and Girls Club of Albany. “ The Carters helped the Plains Boys and Girls Club establish a $2.5 million endowment that ensure the long-term success of the club. Laster only had one disagreement with President Carter. “Our disagreement was one around the naming of this club,” Laster said. “We were sitting in a board meeting at this very facility and he made a motion that we change the name to the Boys and Girls Club of Plains. Because all of his work has not been about him or her. It has been about uplifting people. And I said, ‘President Carter, absolutely not. We will not entertain that motion.’ And I explained to him why it was so important we kept the name the way it was. And he said OK, just as he did as a president negotiating peace deals around the world. We came to a mutual understanding while in meetings we would not refer to it as the Carter unit, but rather the Boys and Girls Club of Plains."

PLAINS, Ga. — Jimmy Carter has always come home to Plains. After leaving the Navy in 1953, he returned to Plains, the tiny Georgia town where he was raised, and where he eventually started the political career that would lead him to the presidency. Years later, he found in Plains a haven where he could reinvent himself after a stinging defeat that ousted him from the White House. And more recently, it was a place to heal, as he weathered severe health setbacks. Now, Mr. Carter, 98, has come back to Plains once again, drawn by the comforts of home and the embrace of a community that he has cherished and relied upon through every chapter of his life, including what now appears to be his last.