On Jimmy Carter's birthdate, his Georgia gravesite is a portrait of peace

PLAINS, Ga. — A boy on a bicycle breezed down a country lane toward Jimmy Carter’s final resting place.

He was in the former president’s hometown to sing and play music at a Wednesday evening celebration at Maranatha Baptist Church, a salute to the native son and governor.

Carter died here Dec. 29 in hospice. He would have turned 101 on Wednesday.

The young bicyclist’s name was Reed Elliotte. He’s a ninth grader from southern Kentucky who describes himself as a presidential historian.

Elliotte, 15, had been to Plains many times, and on occasion, he met and spoke to Carter, his favorite president.

This wasn’t his first visit to the grave site where the nation’s 39th president was laid to rest nine months ago in a plot beside former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023.

The Carters’ burial place, on land not far from their house, opened to the public in July. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day, visitors can pay their respects.

The scene is southwest Georgia farmland meets Augusta National — reverent yet humble, mind you, manicured but not too. The Carter gravestones are less than 150 yards from U.S. 280, where 18-wheelers throb past well within earshot, lugging everything from pulpwood to double-wide trailers.

The graves are positioned on a slight rise, amid a carpet of sod, shrouded by a curved bed of azaleas and a row of white vincas. The plot is a break in a hodgepodge woodland, a residential refuge of oak and pine. A lone pecan tree stands nearby. Butterflies dart. An American chestnut sapling rises beside a small pond. There’s a weeping willow, a johnboat upturned.

It is a place of solitude, reflection and refined simplicity.

A stone walkway swings wide of the graves. A trio of trailside markers the size of index cards ever so gently reminds guests to keep off the lawn there.

The trailside markers bear a three-word message. They read, as author and Sunday school teacher Jimmy Carter might phrase it: “Stay On Path.”

Some folks, though, can’t resist. They inch closer — one, two, three steps onto the grass — to snap photos of the twin Carter graves.

Elliotte, who on this day earlier this week arrived on a bike from just down the road in the heart of Plains, first visited the burial site in August.

He signed the guest book that day. The next signature in the log, which is kept daily by the National Park Service, was that of Mary Jean Eisenhower, granddaughter of the 34th president.

On this day, Elliotte stands overlooking the Carter couple’s plot. He said being there, on what is his third trip to Sumter County this year, lends him an air of calm.

“When you’re in Plains, especially for me, you feel this sense of peace that you don’t feel anywhere else,” Elliotte said. “Standing right here definitely shows it.”

A couple of hours later, one of Monday’s next visitors cruised in by car on his way from Florida to the Tennessee hills.

“I thought he was a good man,” Dale Schmitz, 68, of Tampa, said of Jimmy Carter. “Especially after his presidency, all the good things he did, going around the world and building houses for people and feeding the hungry.”

Schmitz noticed the still-visible patchwork of sod atop the late president’s grave.

“It hasn’t been that long since he died,” Schmitz said. “(The grass) hasn’t blended in.”

The Carters, who grew up in Plains and lived in the same modest ranch bungalow they built in 1961, were a familiar sight around town for decades. They rarely appeared in public in their final years amid growing health problems, and the former president entered home hospice in early 2023.

To mark Jimmy Carter’s birth date in Atlanta, the nonprofit Carter Center will host a ceremony Wednesday, when the United States Postal Service will issue a commemorative “forever” stamp that pays tribute to the former president.

In Plains, a threatened federal government shutdown Wednesday could complicate things. The Jimmy Carter National Historical Park, which includes the grave site and the former president’s boyhood farm, couldn’t confirm Tuesday if the sites would remain open on Carter’s birth date.

Half a mile or so from the former first couple’s resting place, on Main Street in Plains’ tiny commercial district — a handful of eateries, souvenir shops, a drugstore and an antique mart — the president’s passing has had some impact on business. How much depends on whom you ask.

“Tourism definitely has been down,” said Stephanie Young, who runs Southwest Trophy and Gifts. “As far as the businesses, we’re the same, and we’re still trying to promote their legacy and encourage people to keep coming to Plains.”

At the Plains Historic Inn & Antique Mall, manager Myra Chavers said business was “maybe a little less but not a whole lot. We’re not seeing a drastic change. … It’s been steady.”

At Plain Peanuts, a general store and ice cream shop where Jimmy was known to partake of the butter-pecan, clerk Brenda Richardson said business was “slowly picking up” but that the town itself hasn’t changed much in the wake of the Carters’ deaths.

“It’s like they’re still with us to me,” Richardson said. “Because they’re buried there at the house and they’re still where they were, you know, and to me it’s just like they’re still here. I mean, we just don’t see them like we used to.”

A couple of doors down at Plains Trading Post, a souvenir emporium that bills itself as the country’s largest political memorabilia shop, owner Philip Kurland has sensed a slowdown.

“The traffic flow is slower and overall people are spending less,” Kurland said. “The volume is down, things are slower.”

He hopes the park service’s anticipated opening of the Carter home to tourists will serve as an economic infusion.

“When his home is opened,” Kurland said. “I think that’s going to be a whole new ballgame.”