PLAINS, Ga. – Known around the world for fighting deadly diseases, making sure elections are run fairly and building homes for low-income families, former President Jimmy Carter is a hometown boy at heart.
Every time the 95-year-old takes a fall, fractures his hip or gets his head stitched up, townspeople hold their breath, say a prayer and wonder how many more Sunday school classes he’s got left in him to teach. The concern was palpable this week, when Carter underwent surgery to treat a subdural hematoma, the result of a head injury from an fall at home that required 14 stitches in October. Since May, he's fallen three times.
After the fall Oct. 6, Carter flew that same day to Nashville to attend the opening ceremonies for the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project for Habitat for Humanity. He spent the next week in the hot sun hammering away on homes. The town, heralded on a sign above Bobby Salter's Plain Peanuts and General Store as the “Home of Jimmy Carter,” is a living, breathing presidential museum. It's hard to miss the peanut statues with Carter's toothy grin, his boyhood farm or even his brother Billy’s old gas station.
Pierce has been a friend ever since, attending birthday celebrations and going quail and turkey hunting with the president, always with the bevy of Secret Service agents in tow.