ATLANTA — President Jimmy Carter made an enormous impact not just throughout the world but right here in Georgia where he was born and raised.
Carter appointed another Georgian, Andrew Young, to become the first Black ambassador to the United Nations in 1977. On Sunday, Ambassador Young reflected on not only Carter the president, but the person as well.
“He had more sensitivity and a stronger conscience than any other person that I’ve known," Young said.
Young said President Carter was the most disciplined person he's met in his entire life. He believes Carter's legacy will be that of a peacemaker both during his presidency and throughout his work at the Carter Center.
Carter's childhood growing up in rural Plains., Ga. helped shape him into the man he became.
“He grew up in an area that is poor and both Black and white. He didn’t segregate poverty," Young said. "He probably had more Black friends than white friends."
Carter appointed more women and people of color than all of his predecessors combined. That includes Ambassador Young, who said Carter was a long-term planner.
“I’d say the priority issue in his cabinet was world peace," Young said.
Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer and historian Kai Bird wrote a book about President Carter called The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.
“He was very hard-working and paid attention to the details," Kai Bird said.
Bird believes Carter will be remembered as the most dedicated and intelligent U.S. president of the 20th Century.
"He was the kind of guy who got up with the dawn at 5:36 in the morning, and he was in the Oval Office a half hour later and his working day was off in 12 hours," Bird said. "He would read 200 or 300 pages of memos every day."
Brothers Jim and Will Pattiz made the documentary "Carterland" about President Carter. Will said Carter is a man of great faith who doesn't fear death because he believes in the afterlife.
“You really have to go way back in American history to find a character like Jimmy Carter, who came from basically nothing to rise to the highest level of office in the world. It's really incredible," Jim Pattiz said.
His brother, Will, talked about Carter's faith and how he's at peace with his afterlife.
"He is a deeply religious person," Will Pattiz said. "I think it gives everybody who's a follower and supporter of him great comfort and knowing that if there has ever been a person that is okay with their own mortality and knows kind of where they're headed next, it is Jimmy Carter.”
Saturday’s stunning announcement about Carter entering home hospice care actually didn’t come as a big surprise to Ambassador Young, who said he's been hearing for about a year now Carter could go into hospice.
Young also said the Black community believed in Carter from the very beginning.