PLAINS — In Plains, every third car seems to be plastered with a news station’s logo.
Satellite dishes have popped up alongside the blooming camellias and daffodils coaxed open by southwest Georgia’s spring-like weather. Cars, vans and satellite trucks from various media outlets clump together like barnacles on the edges of the tiny downtown and the historic sites honoring the life of former President Jimmy Carter.
Many residents of Plains, including veterans of the Carter craze that boosted tourism and media attention around his presidency in the late 1970s and early 1980s, patiently sit through interviews with national and far-flung local news outlets. Plains public works contractors repaint the lines on Main Street under the watchful eyes and bright lights of network cameras.
Plains is again at the center of international news as the former president spends his final days in hospice care in his hometown. The Carter Center said in a statement Saturday that Carter, 98, “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention” after being hospitalized.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
The announcement came just ahead of Presidents Day, which typically brings a bump in tourism to Plains, National Parks Service superintendent Jill Stuckey said.
“There was an uptick more than usual,” Stuckey said of the Monday holiday. “I think more reporters than anybody else,” she added.
Out-of-towners are obvious in peanut-farming Plains, which has barely 500 residents and is more than 100 miles south of Atlanta, even without the decal-wrapped news vehicles.
Credit: Henri Hollis
Credit: Henri Hollis
Stuckey moved to Plains in 1998 but was already a friend of the Carter family, she said. The Carters turned over their home to the NPS in 1980s and the federal agency has maintained it since. Stuckey said she regularly builds fires at the house for Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, so she sees them often.
The Carters, aside from their time in the White House from 1977 to 1981, have lived in the same ranch house since it was built in 1961.
Though Stuckey has a rare window into the life of the Carter family, she is protective of their privacy.
“When a president’s elected, the next day, the new president has to go over their burial plans,” Stuckey said during an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “So there’s been a lot of different plans for President and Mrs. Carter. They just keep living, which is wonderful.”
And what, specifically, are those plans?
“Yeah, there’s nothing I’m willing to share,” Stuckey said with polite firmness.
Nelle Ariail, a longtime friend of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, is hosting several AJC staffers at her Victorian-style home near downtown Plains. In the past few days, Ariail was profiled in the AJC, interviewed by a Macon-based news station and invited CBS cameras into her home after a reporter and photographer stopped by, unannounced, and knocked on her door.
In the past, media duties fell to her husband, Reverend Dan Ariail, who was the pastor of Maranatha Baptist Church where the Carters have been members since 1981. Since her husband’s death in 2013, Miss Nelle, as she’s known to neighbors, has been the go-to for interviews.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
“Sometimes in the past, we were shy with the press because we’d seen people get misquoted,” Ariail told the AJC. “But we understand y’all are just doing your jobs.”
Other Carter relatives and townspeople are working hard to put Plains’ best foot forward while preserving the longest-living American president’s dignity. The block of buildings that constitute most of downtown Plains glowed Tuesday night with the light of hundreds of lightbulbs.
Kim Fuller, Jimmy Carter’s niece and the executive director of the Friends of the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site, said the display is usually reserved for the Christmas season.
Credit: Henri Hollis
Credit: Henri Hollis
”But last night, I was doing my walk, and I thought you know what? This might be a good time to turn them on,” she said Wednesday morning.
Fuller thought it would be a good way to honor Carter.
The stands of lights outline the windows and roofline of the small cluster of buildings that have become a well-known backdrop for media and camera crews. The lights also wrap around three sides of a red, white and blue billboard that proudly proclaims, “Plains, Georgia home of Jimmy Carter our 39th president.”
The Friends group partners with the National Park Service and raises money for educational offerings and other programs at the Carter-related sites in Plains.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Fuller, the daughter of Carter’s late brother, Billy, said the past few days have “been kind of hard,” but declined to elaborate.
But the bright bulbs that now light up the night sky speak volumes for the town Carter made famous.
”He’s done so much for all of us. It’s time for us to do more for him, just to let people know we’re thinking of him,” Fuller said.
She said she plans to keep the light switch on in the coming days.
