Whenever Jimmy Carter took a flight somewhere, hundreds of people at a time got a chance to see the type of person he was.
Far from an aloof celebrity, the former president flew commercial and was known for walking genially down the aisle of the airplane, shaking each passenger’s hand and smiling.
A video of the former president doing his normal walk through the aircraft went viral in 2017. James Parker Sheffield, a passenger on the flight, posted the video on Twitter, the site now known as X, and wrote: “Jimmy Carter is on my plane to DC from ATL and just shook every hand of every passenger. ”
“It’s hard to put into words what a nice reprieve from the current political theater this moment was,” Sheffield told Channel 2 Action News in 2017.
Jill Vejnoska, a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the time who covered Jimmy Carter closely, reported back then:
In fact, what Carter did last week was nothing new. He’s long made a habit of shaking his fellow passenger’s hands when he boards a flight — even greeting an AJC reporter and his bride thusly nearly two decades ago as they were taking off on their honeymoon. It’s a sincerely heartfelt gesture on his part that also relieves the crew and security of having to deal with a barrage of in-flight requests from passengers wanting to meet the former president.
On Sunday, after Carter died, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian wrote a similar sentiment in a message on LinkedIn.
“My heart is heavy today with the loss of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, a remarkable man who lived every day of his life in service to others,” Bastian wrote. “While the world will long remember his many contributions to democracy, I will also remember the countless days he spent at Habitat for Humanity International builds around the world, and the time he took to shake the hands of every single Delta customer and employee when he flew with us. There is much we can learn from his kindness, compassion and humility.
Bastian added that Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, “meant a great deal to all of us at Delta Air Lines and will be sorely missed.”
The Carters’ relationship with Delta roots back to the 1970s when he was governor of Georgia, and the couple flew Delta often.
The airline has been an annual sponsor of the Carter Center since its inception after the couple returned to Georgia from the White House. Delta has also supported Habitat for Humanity — a longtime charitable cause of the Carters.
— Staff writer Emma Hurt contributed to this story.
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