Grandpa Jimmy stood in the breakfast nook with 6-year-old Sarah and 9-year-old Jason clinging to his tired legs. While the kids still were snoozing Thursday morning, Grandpa and one of those men with the funny-looking hearing aids had gone out running together along the Evanston lakefront.
Grandpa runs wherever he goes–Jerusalem, Cairo, Peking, London, Paris, Evanston and back home in Plains, Ga.–and nobody gets up earlier than he does. Except Jack. His son Jack, Sarah`s and Jason`s dad, starts out at 5:30 a.m. to do his commodity trading.
”I saw a guy catch a real nice fish,” Grandpa reported Thursday morning after his run. ”It was about a five-pound fish. Looked like a salmon to me. The man didn`t get it completely out of the water because he got sort of nervous when I walked up and started watching him. I didn`t say anything. I was just standing there, sweating, and he said, `Aren`t you Carter?` ”
”I said, `Carter who?` And he said, `Aw, you`re President Carter, aren`t you?` And I said yes. Then I decided I`d better leave before he got so distracted that he lost his fish.”
Jason wearily rested his head on the breakfast nook table. Sarah grinned
–more to show Grandpa the space where her tooth is missing than to acknowledge his fish story. And the former Judy Langford, who is Sarah and Jason`s mother, lingered near the entrance to the dining room and noted through her sleepy eyes that the hour had slipped well past 8 o`clock and that the new Carter condominium was rapidly filling up with people who would take Grandpa away from them. Secret Service personnel were beginning to talk into their watchbands; press agents and advance people were beginning to glance nervously at their watch faces; and the few hours of family togetherness were swiftly coming to an end.
Judy glanced wistfully at the dining room table. One of its legs had been cracked during the recent move. ”That was Jimmy`s project when he got here,” she said. ”He was supposed to figure out if and when it could be fixed. The verdict is, it can be fixed.”
But the family carpenter would not have time to fix it. Grandpa Jimmy had changed into his gray suit and dark-figured tie by then. His silver hair had been showered and brushed into an absolute denial of sweat, and he was becoming, once again, that slightly remote man known as President Jimmy Carter.
All right, former president. But he still can attract a crowd when he wants to, and these days he wants to, because he is promoting a book he just wrote, ”The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East.”
His most successful book promotion, of course, was for his first effort,
”Why Not the Best?” By winning the New Hampshire primary in 1976, he pushed sales past the million mark. For ”Keeping Faith,” Carter`s memoirs of his presidency, he campaigned nationally for 10 extremely busy days. For
”Blood of Abraham” he would do the same. After that brief pause in the breakfast nook on Thursday morning, Carter would submit to interviews and give speeches until well past dinner time. Friday morning, he would beat even Jack to the door and catch an early flight to Minneapolis.
”It`s not as difficult as campaigning,” Carter said. ”You have all the same questions, but you don`t have to remember all the county and city officials when you get off the airplane, and there`s not nearly as much of an adversarial relationship with the press.”
The only reporter on hand in the Evanston condo Thursday morning wasn`t feeling adversarial enough to sift once again through the dry sands of Carter`s slim volume on Middle Eastern politics. Other media people on Carter`s full agenda would have ample opportunity for that–in situations where Sarah would not be bouncing on his lap and Jason would not be begging Grandpa to buy him some Cubs tickets.
The kids were getting ready for school, an entourage was gathering and it did not seem an auspicious time to be discussing the subtle differences between Druzes, Sunni Moslems and Maronite Christians. Carter couldn`t easily do that even on a quiet day in the Oval Office.
”It was almost impossible for me to remember the different alignments and factions in Lebanon while I was President,” Carter writes. He finally directed the Central Intelligence Agency to include once a week in his daily briefing a summary of all Lebanon`s religious and political groups, their leaders, the size and effectiveness of their militia, their foreign connections and the latest changes in their status. ”Only then could I understand the news reports from the troubled country,” he admits.
Carter still gropes mightily for understanding. His series of seminars at Emory University in Atlanta, where he holds a professorship, have included some highly placed world leaders and may someday help provide answers for those people responsible for fashioning a lasting peace on Earth.
His future writings may even come up with a reply for those leaders who travel down to Emory and ask the 60-year-old Carter how he manages to continue looking so . . . marvelous.
”Rosalynn and I are now writing a book about personal health care,” he disclosed. ”And if our marriage survives, it will come out some time next year. We`ve never tried anything as coauthors before, and we both have minds of our own. It`ll be a simple and highly personal book about what people can do for themselves to extend their lifespan or to have a healthier or a more enjoyable existence. Rosalynn has become almost an expert on nutrition. It has been a fascinating subject to her for years. We both take a lot of exercise. We watch our weight and eat balanced meals.”
In Washington, Rosalynn Carter demonstrated a mind so much her own that she frequently submitted policy positions on issues of the day. That has led some observers to suspect she may run for office.
Jimmy Carter smiled at such speculation. ”She`s not going to run for office anytime soon,” he said. ”The only thing open in Georgia would be the U.S. Senate, and I don`t think she`s going to go to Washington and spend six years without me. At least, I hope not.”
Judy Carter overheard her father-in-law`s comment and shot him a teasing look. ”You might be surprised,” she purred.
Before anything further could be said on that subject, Sarah diverted attention by pulling her jacket over her head and making monster faces. Somebody in the entourage remarked that she looked remarkably like Amy Carter did when Jimmy took office. ”Like Amy, she`s a brat,” Grandpa said fondly.
Sarah was getting restless because she had promised her 1st-grade class at Lincoln School that she would bring a former president so they could conduct a seminar of their own. Soon, the bell for first period would ring.
”Let`s go,” Carter said. ”Don`t you make me late for school.”
Sarah and her grandpa walked hand in hand through the neighborhood and found an excited crowd of Lincoln pupils and faculty waiting by the entrance. Principal Warren Cherry and Sarah`s teacher, Pat Doyle, led them into the classroom.
Carter stood in front of the blackboard and grinned expectantly. Doyle said, ”First, I`d like to take our lunch count because we won`t have any time later.” The former president waited while each of the 24 in class told Doyle ”sack” or ”hot” or (in the case of Sarah and a few others) ”lunch at home.”
Sarah introduced her grandfather to the class by saying, simply, ”I like to make things out of wood with him.” Then she opened the floor to questions. ”Why did you want to be president?”
Carter recited his resume, from Annapolis to submarine duty to the Georgia governor`s mansion. ”And then I decided I might even be president. I wanted to keep our nation at peace. I wanted to promote human rights and civil rights and promote education for children.”
”That`s fair enough!” exclaimed a boy in the front row.
”What is it like to be in the White House?” another pupil wanted to know.
”For children, it`s very good. And also for parents and grandparents it`s good. I could walk to my office and I got to work early. After work was over, we could play tennis. We had a swimming pool of our own. And in the basement, we had a bowling alley that President Harry Truman had put there. And the thing that Amy liked best, we had a movie theater all of our own. Amy would bring her friends from school back to the White House, and on Friday nights they would watch two or three movies and have a swimming party.
”Living in the White House was a lot of fun, even though sometimes the work was kind of hard.”
”What was it like to be president?” asked a boy in the back.
”Quite often a lot of fun, too. We had interesting visitors who came from all over the world–China, Japan, Russia, Central America and Africa. And we had a very fine friend from Egypt who came over, Anwar Sadat. And I had friends who came over from Israel. . . . We got the leaders from Egypt and Israel, who had been fighting for 25 years, to come to Camp David, a place in the mountains up across from Washington. We spent 13 days there and we made those two men become peaceful and friends. So they haven`t had a war since.” A couple more questioners sought more details on all the mysterious areas within the White House. ”Oh, yeah, a lot of secret passages,” Carter revealed. ”You just wouldn`t believe all the secret passages there are. And secret doors! You wouldn`t even see them until you pushed and they opened up.”
Pat Doyle then gathered her charges for a group photograph. ”Would the Secret Service men please hold up their hands?” she requested. ”We`ve talked a lot about Secret Service in class.” A tall man, positioned at the rear of the room, smiled and raised his arm. ”There`s that mystical being,” Doyle exclaimed. ”Now we know what a Secret Service man looks like.”
”Most of them look much better,” Carter said.
Carter beamed when the teacher called him aside and told him that Sarah had learned to write superbly. ”That`s very exciting when you`re a grandparent,” said the man from Plains.
As Carter and his entourage prepared to depart, Grandpa Jimmy told Sarah`s classmates, ”Those are the best questions I`ve had on the whole tour.” Sarah`s pride showed in her gap-toothed grin. During most of the session she had appeared embarrassed, as if she wished for a secret door she could push. After Grandpa`s performance she probably realized she could get a free sack lunch from anyone in the room.
