PLAINS, Ga. — Nelle Ariail has 40 years' worth of stories about Jimmy Carter.
There is the time the former president showed up in her driveway riding his bicycle to come see about a tree that had fallen in her yard. Or the time in the 1990s when he told Ariail’s husband, Dan, who served as Carter’s pastor at Maranatha Baptist Church and was pursuing his doctorate, he couldn’t do his work on a typewriter and not only gave him a computer, but also taught him how to use it.
There are the five trips across the continent working with Habitat for Humanity — including a Tijuana trip that had them sleeping in tents and warming a bag of water in the sun to bathe by hanging it in a makeshift shower stall. Or when she made a teddy bear out of one of his shirts that was auctioned off for more than $1,000 to raise money for the City of Plains. Or even being in Sweden to watch Carter receive his Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
