gift of peace: revised edition

8/12/2019 Gift of Peace: Revised Edition

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ZONDERKIDZ

Gift of Peace: The Jimmy Carter Story, Revised EditionCopyright 2011, 2014 by Elizabeth Raum

This title is also available as a Zondervan ebook.Visit www.zondervan.com/ebooks

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zonderkidz, 3900 Sparks Drive SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Raum, Elizabeth. Gift of Peace : the Jimmy Carter Story Revised Edition/ Elizabeth Raum. p. cm. (Zonderkidz biography series) ISBN 978-0-310-73836-7 (softcover) 1. Carter, Jimmy, 1924 Juvenile literature. 2. PresidentsUnited StatesBiographyJuvenile literature. I. Title.E873.R38 2011973.926092dc23[B] 2011024821

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible,New International Version ,NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical,photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews,without the prior permission of the publisher.

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Art direction: Deborah WashburnCover design: Deborah WashburnInterior design: Ben Fetterley and Greg Johnson/Textbook Perfect

Printed in the United States of America


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Chapter 1

Helping Out

In 1976, Jimmy Carter ran for president of the United

States, and America went nuts peanuts, that is. Fewpeople outside of the South recognized his name. Whowas Jimmy Carter? He needed a way to introduce him-self to the voters, and peanuts paved the way. Jimmy ranhis familys peanut business. He grew up on a farm andsold bagfuls on the streets of Georgia as a child. Jimmychose a big smiling peanut ashis campaign logo. He andhis family gave away but-tons and bags of roasted nutsthat read, Jimmy Carter ForPresident. Men wore goldpeanut pins and women worepeanut necklaces. Jimmyf f

Jimmy, whose full name is JamesEarl Carter Jr., was born at the WiseHospital in Plains, Georgia, onOctober 1, 1924. Jimmy was the rstUnited States president to be bornin a hospital. Until the 1920s, mostwomen gave birth at home. Jimmysmother, a nurse, believed that hos-pital births were safer for motherand baby than home births


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Supporters in Evanston, Illinois, welcomed Jimmy to their town bybuilding a thirteen-foot peanut with a grin as big as Jimmy Carters.Located in Plains, Georgia, it may not be the biggest peanut

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Helping Out

airplane called Peanut One, and his supporters calledthemselves the Peanut Brigade . It was nutty.

Of course, there was much more to Jimmy Carterthan farming. He fought for civil rights, served in thenavy, and had been elected Georgias governor. He wasa husband, a dad, and an active member of his church.It was Jimmy Carters honesty and willingness to helpothers that convinced voters to elect him president of theUnited States.

Today, thirty years after leaving the White House, hecontinues to work hard and help others throughout thenation and around the world.

First useful actJimmy Carter learned to help others at a young age from

the influence of his parents. His mother, Lillian GordyCarter, studied nursing at the Wise Hospital in Plains,Georgia. Thats where she met Jimmys dad, James EarlCarter Sr., a local businessman. Jimmys parents, whoeveryone called Miss Lillian and Mr. Earl, providedhim and his sisters with a safe and loving home, first inPlains, a town of about six hundred people, and then inthe smaller community of Archery, Georgia.

On the day that Jimmys dad, Mr. Earl, took Jimmy,Gloria, and Miss Lillian to see their new home inArchery, he forgot the key. It was two and a half miles

back to Plains, so Mr. Earl tried to pry open a window. Itwas stuck, and he could only open it a crack. The narrowopening was far too small for a big man like Mr. Earl, so


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unlocked it. Jimmy later called it his first useful act.Nothing pleased Jimmy more than being helpful.

At home in ArcheryThe Carters house in Archery was square and paintedwhite. Cars passing by the highway kicked up so muchdust that the house took on the brownish-red color ofthe dirt. The house had no running water or bathroomsinside. Jimmy drew water from the well in the yard andhauled it to the house for cooking, laundry, and wash-ing up. Extra buckets of water were stored on the back

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Jimmy was four years old, and his sister Gloria was two, when the

Carters moved to a farm in Archery, Georgia.

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Helping Out

privy) with two holes for toilets. The larger one was foradults, and a smaller one was reserved for children itkept them from falling in! The Carters took recyclingseriously long before everyone understood its impor-tance. Instead of toilet paper, they used old newspapersor pages torn from a Sears Roebuck catalog.

Although Jimmys home wasnt big and fancy, hisfamily was better off than many others. During the1930s, when Jimmy was a boy, the Great Depression

left many people jobless, homeless, and hungry. Farmsfailed, factories closed, and people lost their homes to the

bank. Children as young as six or seven went to work,trying to earn a few pennies for food.

The Carter house sat beside a main highway. Often,single men traveled past on their way west looking for

jobs. Occasionally, entire families took to the roads seek-ing a better life. Homeless travelers like these were calledtramps. Many stopped at the Carter home hoping tofind work or something to eat. If Jimmys mother, MissLillian, was home, she never turned anyone away. Shealways gave them some food to help them on their way.

One day Miss Lillian was talking to a neighbor. Imthankful that they never come in my yard, the neighborsaid.

The next time a tramp knocked on Miss Lillians door,she asked why he stopped at her house and not others.

The post on your mailbox is marked to say that youdont turn people away or mistreat us, he said. He ex-plained that tramps used a set of rough symbols to help


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Jimmy and his sisters checked the mailbox. They dis-covered a series of nearly invisible scratches on the post.When Jimmy turned to his mother, she told him not tochange those marks. He learned from his mothers ex-ample that its important to help others, even those youdont know and may never see again.

As he grew older, Jimmy put these lessons to work.No matter where he was or what office he held, JimmyCarter never forgot the importance of helping others.

The house in Archery had two porches, a wide one in front facingthe road, and a smaller one in back.

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Chapter 2

Jimmys Early Life

Mr. Earl loved to play tennis. Soon after moving to

Archery, he built a tennis court near the house. Hetaught Jimmy to play tennis too. But no matter howhard he tried, Jimmy could never beat his dad! Mr. Earlalso dug a small swimming pool behind the house. Itwas a great place to swim, except for one big problem.Sometimes, poisonous snakes slithered from the nearbyswamps into the pool. The children always checked thepool carefully before diving into the water.

Jimmy spent most of his time outdoors. He didnthave much in common with his younger sisters. Gloriawas two years younger than Jimmy. Ruth, born afterthe family moved to Archery, was three years younger.Neither of them worked in the barn or fields like Jimmydid. They spent their time sewing, cooking, or playing

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and for church on Sunday. Sometimes, in the winter, thechildren played board games at the dining room table be-fore bed. From time to time, their parents took them toAmericus, fourteen miles away, to see a movie. Jimmysonly brother, Billy, wasnt born until Jimmy was twelve.

During the summers, the Carters spent their eve-nings on the front porch sitting on rocking chairs or theporch swing. On winter evenings, they lit the fireplacein the living room. Kerosene lamps provided light asthey gathered around a large battery-powered radio andlistened to the big band music of Glenn Miller or to

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In this elementaryschool photo,Jimmy shows hisworld-famous smile.

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Jimmys Early Life

Molly. Sometimes they heard sports announcers describ-ing faraway baseball games or boxing matches.

During the summers, daytime was work time. Jimmyspent long hours helping his father. Mr. Earl alwayscalled Jimmy Hot or Hot Shot . Hot, would you like topick cotton this afternoon? Mr. Earl would ask. Hotalways said yes. He wanted to live up to his fathers highexpectations. My father was my hero, Jimmy laterwrote. I watched his every move with admiration.

Jimmy got up at 4:00 a.m. when the big farm bellcalled workers to the fields. He watched farmhandsgather supplies by lantern light, hitch the mules to thewagons, and drive to the fields as the sun came up. Assoon as he was big enough to carry a bucket, Jimmys fa-ther put him to work hauling water to the field workers.

He carried an empty bucket in each hand to the spring,which was usually located at the bottom of a steep hillin a boggy area. Water sloshed out of the heavy bucketsas Jimmy carried them back to the workers. They gulpeddown the water and sent Jimmy back for more.

Mr. Earl encouraged Jimmy to earn money as a busi-nessman. Jimmy was only five years old when his dadsent him to Plains to sell peanuts on a street corner. Theseason lasted about two months, starting in mid-July.At first, Jimmy sold bags of peanuts that his father pre-pared. As he got older, he helped prepare the peanuts.Peanut seeds grow into green, oval-shaped bushes thatsend tiny vines into the ground. Most vines produceabout fifty nuts. When the peanuts were ripe, Jimmy


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Jimmys Early Life

Aunt Ethel was slow in preparing the meal, which both-ered Jimmy. He didnt want to miss playing baseball orother sports with the boys on the playground during re-cess. Jimmy waited patiently, but he was always eager toget back to school.

Jimmy could read and write before he began school.He loved reading. In third grade, he won a contest forreading the most books. As a reward, he ate dinner withhis teacher, Miss Tot. Jimmy wore his best clothes for the

big event. His excitement gave way to shock when MissTot served sauerkraut, a pickled cabbage dish. Jimmyhad never eaten sauerkraut before. He thought it lookedand tasted like a big mistake. Nevertheless, he ate it all.The other part of the reward pleased him more. Miss Totgave him a framed print of a famous painting by Thomas

Gainsborough. Jimmy hung it in his room. The picturemore than made up for his struggle with the sauerkraut.All the teachers encouraged their students to read.

Miss Julia Coleman, the school superintendent, insistedon it. Miss Julia often singled out students who excelled.Jimmy was one of her favorites. She gave him extra as-signments and reading lists. She awarded him a silverstar for every five books he read, and a gold star for everyten. When he was in the fifth grade, Miss Coleman sug-gested that Jimmy read War and Peace by Russian authorLeo Tolstoy. At first, Jimmy thought it was about cow-

boys and Indians. He soon discovered that War and Peace told the story of a war between France and Russia in theearly 1800s. The novel is more than 1400 pages long.


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Jimmys parents encouraged reading at home too.When the children were small, Mr. Earl sat in his easychair in front of the fireplace and read aloud. His ownreading included newspapers, magazines, and farming

journals.Jimmys mother read constantly. As soon as the chil-

dren learned to read on their own, she encouraged themto bring their books to dinner. After saying the blessing,everyone opened their books and began reading. Talking

was forbidden. Years later, when he became a dad,Jimmy continued this practice with his own children.

The outdoor lifeBy the time Jimmy was eight years old, he did manychores on the farm. Mr. Earl grew cotton, sugar cane,

and peanuts, as well as vegetables like sweet potatoes,okra, peas, corn, cabbage, turnips, and collards. Jimmysmost dreaded chore was mopping cotton. To do this, he

brushed a mixture of arsenic, molasses, and water ontoeach cotton plant with a cloth mop. The sticky brownpoison killed the bugs that ate the cotton, but it also at-tracted flies and honeybees. The flies and bees followedJimmy and his mop through the cotton field. Flies stuckto the bucket. By the time Jimmy got home, his pantswere so stiff with the sticky mix that they would standup by themselves in a corner of his bedroom.

There were plenty of breaks from farm work. Huntingand fishing were part of everyday life in rural Georgiatoo. By the time Jimmy was six, his father had taught


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Jimmys Early Life

moved up to a Remington .22 semiautomatic rifle.Jimmy joined his dad hunting doves and bobwhite quail.

Jimmy was the best tree-climber in all of Archery,and sometimes, when the farmers went possum hunt-ing, they invited Jimmy along. During possum hunts,he climbed high into the trees and shook the branches,knocking the possum to the ground. The men on theground tried to capture it before the dogs did.

Jimmy and his dad were fascinated with the lives

of Native Americans. They often hiked in the fields orstreams around Archery looking for Native Americanpottery, arrowheads, or spearheads. Winter was the besttime to find such things because rain often washed long-

buried items to the surface. When they did discover a bitof pottery or an arrowhead, Jimmy and his dad would

study it for hours before adding it to their collection.Hunting, fishing, and searching for arrowheads becamelifelong hobbies.


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