PLAINS, Ga. — “To me, he’s a friend. To a lot of us here, he’s just a churchgoer that sits on the same pews,” said Zac Steele, one of the lay leaders of Maranatha Baptist Church, the congregation where Carter long taught Sunday school lessons until his health declined.
For the last half-century, the people here love to tell visitors they have a pair of famous exports: peanuts and a peanut farmer-turned-president.
The local airport is named in his honor, and his boyhood farm and his colorful brother’s gas station have been turned into bona fide tourist attractions. The high school that Carter and Rosalynn attended is a national historic site. A red-white-and-blue sign reminds tourists they’ve entered the home of “Our 39th President.”
