Jimmy Carter, the carpenter and former president of the United States, may well have swung his last hammer. But the homebuilding legacy he and wife Rosalynn Carter championed for people in need will roll on in another big way starting Sunday.
Atlanta-based Habitat for Humanity International will hold its annual Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project, which this year is in St. Paul, Minnesota. The event, running through Oct. 4, is timed to overlap with the former president’s 100th birthday on Tuesday. Thousands of volunteers and others are expected to help build 30 new affordable homes.
“We thought the best way to celebrate … is to have people out building in his name,” said Jonathan Reckford, Habitat’s chief executive officer.
Carter was a skilled carpenter and woodworker, a hobby he further honed after his presidency ended.
He and his wife first took part in a Habitat build 40 years ago, connecting with a nonprofit that had its roots in southwest Georgia near the first family’s Plains hometown, where the former president has been in hospice since February 2023.
Year after year, the Carters returned, creating new homes around the country and the world, boosting attention and funding for Habitat. In the process, the former commander in chief sharpened his reputation for dedicating much of his life after the White House to trying to help others.
The former first couple joined other Habitat volunteers, sleeping nights in a church basement and in tents. They sloshed through mud, endured rain and simmered in blazing heat. On a build in Miami in 1991, people driving by the site exchanged gunfire several hundred yards from the couple.
When he was 86, Carter took part in a build after a hospital stay caused by a virus. At 95, he arrived at a Habitat work site bandaged, with 14 stitches and a black eye from a fall. That build, in 2019, was the last one the Carters actively took part in on site.
As the Carters eventually slowed with age, they were urged not to go up ladders or work on roofs at the sites, Reckford said. The CEO recalled carrying lumber with the former president when Carter was 93. “He made the comment, ‘You know this isn’t quite as much fun as when I was 80.’”
But the Carters kept pushing for a number of causes, he said, because “they had such a deep sense of purpose and such a sense of responsibility to make the world better. I think the idea of just sitting around was just anathema to them.”
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
With Rosalynn Carter’s death last year and the former president’s advancing age and declining health, Habitat officials are readying for how to keep the organization primed in their absence. The pair “put Habitat on the map” through the couple’s namesake annual builds, which gathered more than 100,000 volunteers over the years and built or rehabbed more than 4,400 homes.
But their impact was much broader than even that. Reckford credited them for aiding the expansion of the nonprofit, from Habitat helping thousands of people every year when they began to helping millions now.
“Our hope is that part of their legacy is they’ve created something so much bigger than themselves that it can sustain without them being there in person and that we will have a wider array of Habitat champions who will carry the torch,” he said.
This year’s event will be hosted by country music stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who have been involved in the Carter builds for years. Members of the Carter family are not expected to be at this year’s Habitat event because many of them are likely to gather for 100th birthday celebrations in Plains.
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