Friday, March 29, 2024

A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety

A Full LifeBy: Terri Schlichenmeyer

The Bookworm Sez

Nanu-Nanu and Pet Rocks.  Mood rings, platform shoes, CBs, and May the Force Be with You. Saturday Night Fever, Pac-Man, disco suits, and Olivia Newton John on rollerskates. If you’re of a Certain Age, these things bring back memories but in the new book “A Full Life” by Jimmy Carter, this ninety-year-old remembers much more.

Former President Jimmy Carter was born in October of 1924 in Georgia, of course, and raised mostly in a small town called Archery, where his family was one of two that was white. Carter remembers how he and neighborhood kids (most of them black) made their own fun, playing games and exploring.

Later, when it was time for him to go to school, Carter attended all-white classes and briefly wondered why his friends weren’t there, too. Though segregation was a way of life in the South, Carter’s mother, a registered nurse who mostly ministered to the black community, raised her children with an innate understanding of equality in all races. His father, a disciplinarian who could do almost anything, generally agreed but sometimes struggled with racial issues.

While Carter’s father “was deeply involved in local and state politics,” Carter himself wasn’t interested in the subject until long after he left the Navy and started a family with the woman he’d known since she was born. By then, he’d taken up farming (although he didn’t initially understand the business side of it) and was eager to benefit from helpful counsel and on-the-job experience in both peanuts and politics. After serving first as Senator of Georgia, then as Governor of Georgia, he began to entertain thoughts of higher goals.

And then, “One morning,” he says, “I received a call from Dean Rusk, our most distinguished Georgian.” Rusk asked to speak privately.

“We sat in rocking chairs on our back veranda and shared an appropriate Southern libation. Without any introduction, he began the conversation by saying, ‘Governor, I think you should run for president in 1976.’”

For the most part, there’s not much new inside “A Full Life.” Older readers will have lived a lot of this. Younger readers may have learned about it in school. What’s here has largely been told, but there are exceptions…

I expected author and former President Jimmy Carter to take a gentle tone here – and he does, but he also writes with strong conviction about issues he tackled that he now feels have been “mostly resolved” and those he believes are still in need of work. In examining past issues in conjunction with current events, his observations are sharp, yet sometimes wistful and maybe, once, even a little bitter. Wow, and I was also interested in seeing his reflections on faith, and how he feels about any line between religion and politics.

“… I did my best and had some notable accomplishments,” says Carter. That’s abundantly clear here, and if you’re a historian, politico, or biography fan, you’ll enjoy reading about them. If this is your kind of book, in fact, “A Full Life” is a full delight.

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