What Jimmy Carter loved about Atlanta
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Former President Jimmy Carter takes a break at a Habitat for Humanity house in Atlanta in July 1988. Photo: Margaret Miller/Photo Researchers History/Getty Images
Jimmy Carter sat behind home plate at Braves games. He and his wife, Rosalynn, shopped for groceries at the old Kroger (now CVS) in Emory Village. And he banged hammers at Habitat for Humanity work sites on Moreland Avenue.
The big picture: Although he is from and lived most of his life in Plains in southwest Georgia, Carter’s connection to Atlanta only grew stronger after leaving the governor's mansion and White House.
- A person can be from two places at one time. And Atlanta was a home for Jimmy Carter.
Zoom in: When Carter spent the night in Atlanta at the Carter Center, he and Rosalynn made do on a pulldown Murphy bed in a small apartment at the Poncey-Highland complex.
- The Carters' family members live in nearby Candler Park and — unbeknownst to the owner and employees — enjoyed picking up Savage Pizza in Little Five Points for meals at the center, a source close to the family once told me.
- Some years after opening, owner Field Coxe told Axios, the center would order pizza to serve at meetings and symposiums. "We were happy to have their business," he said. "We like Jimmy Carter, of course."
- After leaving the White House, Carter lived at the Houston Mill House at Emory University while teaching at the university, Steven Hochman, the Carter Center's director of research and someone who's worked with the former president since 1981, told Axios.
Stretching back decades, Carter was close friends with Manuel Maloof, the owner of Manuel's Tavern, the legendary Democratic watering hole located just a block away from the Carter Center (and where Carter announced his gubernatorial campaign).
- Before every Carter visit, the Secret Service would call to give a heads up, Angelo Fuster, a local politico and Manuel's regular, told Axios. Carter became a regular and would often sit at a back corner table in the main dining room, after walking the main bar and shaking hands with patrons.
In addition, Carter and his family visited Twain’s in Decatur in the 1990s for quiet family dinners and later to support their grandson Jason’s political campaigns.
- "He was down to earth, spoke to us about what we did and how we were," Ethan Wurtzel, Twain's co-owner, told Axios. "It was a great interaction, one we all cherish."
Of note: For dinner out, Hochman said, Jimmy and Rosalynn often visited Country Place, a restaurant in Colony Square that shuttered in the early 2000s.
Zoom out: Carter's work on The Atlanta Project, his mid-1990s initiative to rebuild communities in underinvested southeast Atlanta neighborhoods, helped secure federal funding for East Lake's revitalization, former mayor Shirley Franklin told Axios.
- "He had a real appreciation for how you build community," Franklin said. "And that’s what you do when you do neighborhood development. Schools, churches, houses of worship, recreational facilities. He had a real grasp of that."