This was not the monument I planned to feature today, but former President Jimmy Carter died yesterday, at the age of 100, so here he is. Engraved on the front of four low, granite benches around this monument are words describing the 39th President of the United States: State Senator, Governor, Naval Officer, Man of Faith, Farmer, Conservationist, Global Citizen, Humanitarian, Peacemaker, Teacher, Author, Poet, and Founder, The Carter Center. Dedicated in 1994, it is in a granite plaza underneath the offices of the Governor.
The sculptor was Atlanta-born Frederick E. Hart, famous for the Creation Sculptures at Washington National Cathedral, and The Three Servicemen at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Carter is depicted as a working man, in khakis with his sleeves rolled up. His arms are outstretched with open palms.
Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”
In his speech introducing Carter when he was awarded the Peace Prize, Gunnar Berge of the Norwegian Nobel Committee started by quoting Norwegian poet Kolbein Falkeid:
Do not hang splendid
moments up on the walls
in your thoughts
and gild them
with your longing.
Drive your crowbar
hard under scarred
working days
and force them up.
One by one.
That is why
life has you
on its muster roll.
His speech is worth reading in its entirety, reminding us that Carter was not just a man of words (although he was that– he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his memoir, An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood. David McCullough won for John Adams— but above all, a man of action. Not just words, but deeds.
In his own Nobel Lecture, Carter identified the most pressing problem facing the world that day as the vast chasm between rich and poor. But he also mused a bit about American Power, words we desperately need today:
Great American power and responsibility are not unprecedented, and have been used with restraint and great benefit in the past. We have not assumed that super strength guarantees super wisdom, and we have consistently reached out to the international community to ensure that our own power and influence are tempered by the best common judgment.
Within our country, ultimate decisions are made through democratic means, which tend to moderate radical or ill-advised proposals. Constrained and inspired by historic constitutional principles, our nation has endeavored for more than two hundred years to follow the now almost universal ideals of freedom, human rights, and justice for all.
Rest in Power, President Carter.
