Everything to Gain

Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life

Jimmy Carter

• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Year: 1995
• ISBN:
  9781610751445
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Biografías políticas

Everything to Gain, first published in 1987, is the warm account of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter's life after their years in the White House. They discuss their marriage and health issues, their work with Habitat for Humanity and the Carter Center, and much more.

Working with Our Hands

When it comes to giving, some folks will stop at nothing.

—Jimmy Townsend

JIMMY

We planned to leave home on the Saturday before Labor Day, 1984, ride all night on the bus, and arrive in New York City Sunday afternoon. Under a program called Habitat for Humanity we were going to help renovate an old, dilapidated building in the Lower East Side and turn it into nineteen apartments for poor families.

On a previous trip to New York I had gone to the building on Sixth Street with a group of young Habitat volunteers. We had to push our way inside through piles of trash and debris and climb laboriously from one floor to another where stairs would one day be built. The place was a haven for drifters, drug dealers, and addicts, some of whom had been building fires on top of the trash for warmth and cooking. Many of the ceiling joists were burned in two, and the floors had collapsed in places. From the top three stories we could look up and see the clouds and the blue sky.

My heart went out to the few young people responsible for the project. They were ambitious and determined, but I learned that they had very few specific plans and no means in sight to achieve the goals they had set for themselves. On the spur of the moment and half in jest I said, “I’ll have to come back and do some volunteer carpenter work.”

By the time I returned home, Millard Fuller, the president and founder of Habitat, had already heard about my offer, and he called to thank me! He suggested that a few others might be willing to go with me and Rosalynn sometime during the summer. Rosalynn, too? I hadn’t volunteered her for the task, and I didn’t know whether I really wanted to go or not.

A trip to the big city to work for a week in the sweltering heat of July was not a very attractive proposition. And volunteers, if we could get them, would have to pay for their own transportation and food, carry their own tools, and stay in crowded bunk rooms that had been offered by an old church near the Lincoln Tunnel. There was no information about what our specific tasks would be, and most of the group that we might recruit probably would never have used a saw, mixed mortar, laid a brick, put up a stud, or used a hammer except to hang a picture on the wall.

However, after a few weeks we thought we might have enough prospects to fill a small van—including several professional carpenters, a member of the Americus City Council, a motel owner, a college professor and his new bride—and the list kept growing. It wasn’t long before we had enough volunteers to fill a large bus, and we even turned down additional people who wanted to make the trip. Rosalynn’s reaction had been: “I don’t want to ride a bus all the way to New York!” She seemed to be excited about the trip, though. It would be an adventure of a different type for us, involving no speeches, no letters to write, no major problems to solve, no deep thinking—it would be only manual labor, which might be fun for a change and, she said, a real challenge.

So now the volunteers and I were on our way. The first day of work would be Monday, on which Rosalynn already had a long-standing speaking engagement for the morning. She would have to fly to New York and join us late in the afternoon. The truth is that if she had not had a previous engagement, I think she would have invented one. She felt that strongly about the long bus ride, which was necessary because many of the volunteers couldn’t afford to take a week off from work and also spend the money required for airfare.

The trip turned out to be quite an experience. It was a tiring twenty-five-hour journey, with stops only for meals and a Sunday-morning worship service—but it was an exhilarating twenty-five hours. We sang and told stories, and there developed among us a camaraderie that comes from being somewhat set apart from others, joined together in a common and, we were sure, worthwhile cause. Many in the bus had never visited New York or seen any city larger than Atlanta, and the newness, excitement, and uncertainty about what lay ahead gave us a feeling of adventure.

When we arrived at the site on Sunday afternoon, one look at the bare shell of a building—six stories high with no windows, no doors, no roof, and burned and collapsing floors and ceilings—instantly dampened our spirits. It looked much worse and more fragile now with the structure more fully exposed than it had been in April, when it was full of trash. Our hearts sank. And the loudest dissents were from the few professional builders in the group. “It can’t be done,” they said in chorus. “If this building has been purchased already, we need to tear it down and start from scratch. There is no way it can ever be made livable.” To describe their reaction as despair would be an understatement. They were discouraged almost to the point of resentment that anyone—they all looked at me—could have thought of bringing them so far to be part of an absolute fiasco. There was almost total silence as we made the trip to the church where we would be staying.

During supper I invited the most experienced carpenters to sit with me, and asked each of them to describe a possible approach to be followed if we should go on with the job. Soon they were competing with each other to outline the best plan for how our group could be divided into teams, which tasks had to be performed first, what additional materials we would need, and how much might be accomplished while we were in New York. Finally, exhausted from the trip and still mostly discouraged, we all went to bed—for the first time in two days.

Even the narrow and cramped bunk beds didn’t prevent our getting a good night’s sleep, and early the next morning we piled into the bus again and drove to the old building. Everyone was grim as doubts returned, but no one expressed them. Instead, we all did our best to maintain an atmosphere of confidence. Seven or eight workers were assigned to each floor and the roof, each group under the supervision of someone with experience in construction. Then, donning hard hats, we went to work.

It was dirty, dusty, gritty work, and dangerous for those attempting to rebuild the roof and replace the large structural timbers in the upper floors. Soon we had to put on goggles and masks because of the thick dust that was sifting down from above and billowing up from below, where the remaining debris was being loaded into wheelbarrows and hauled away. It was a long, hard day, but we went back to the church in the late afternoon with a sense of fulfillment, for after only one day with fifty of us there we could begin to see that we could make a difference.

There is great satisfaction in being able to “make a difference” for someone who needs help. The tiredness that comes from any physical activity is all worthwhile, and the spirit sometimes soars. Working with Habitat has been that kind of experience for us. Of all the activities we have undertaken since leaving the White House, it is certainly one of the most inspiring. To help build a home for people who have never lived in a decent place and never dreamed of owning a home of their own can bring both a lot of joy and an emotional response. One has only to have had the experience to know what it means—to the one who is giving time and energy and to the one who is receiving the new home. Soon after we began our work with Habitat, we asked Tom Hall, who had come to the international headquarters for brief volunteer service and had already stayed five years, “Why do you keep on staying?” His answer was, “I see the faces of those who receive the homes.” We have seen the faces, too.

Habitat for Humanity is only one of many worthwhile programs in which anyone with a little time and inclination can perform challenging and useful work. There are so many people in trouble, so many needs right around us. We can find programs to help the poor, the elderly, the handicapped, the imprisoned, the mentally ill, alcoholics, and drug addicts, to name a few. So many of our young people need a helping hand, as do our hospitals, our libraries, art museums, and schools. There is something that every single one of us can do, even the busiest of younger people, but we in the “second half” of our lives often have more time for getting involved. And especially with our life span lengthening and the chances of good health so great, there is an additional stage of life after work when we can devote more of our time to voluntary service. And when we do, as one speaker at a national conference for retirees said, “Everyone benefits. The talents, wisdom and energy of our retirees are badly needed by our communities . . . and retirees who are active and involved have a new sense of self-worth, a source of daily enrichment. The aging process is slowed.” That, we think, appeals to all of us!

Helping others can be surprisingly easy, since there is so much that needs to be done. The hard part comes in choosing what to do and getting started, making the first effort at something different. Once the initiative is taken we often find that we can do things we never thought we could.

JIMMY

Even Rosalynn, who often ventures into the unknown, was sure she would only be cleaning up around the work site on our Habitat trip to New York, or carrying tools and light supplies, or maybe even helping with meals for the other volunteers. To her amazement, she was soon doing a multitude of carpenter’s jobs, and doing them well!

ROSALYNN

I arrived in New York somewhat anxious about what I would be doing. I went first to the church and everyone was there, having returned from the first full day of work. I was taken to the fourth floor and shown a bottom bunk in a dormitory-type room that I would be sharing with six other women. Though dinner was being served in the basement, many of the women were still upstairs. I soon learned why. There was one bathroom and more than twenty women! Some still had on their dirty work clothes, and their hair was stiff with plaster dust. Listening to them relate the stories of the day and the disbelief at the work conditions, I was even less sure about what I was in for.

Next morning I put on jeans and a Habitat T-shirt and prepared for my first day on the job. When we arrived at the site, I was assigned to the second story. Jimmy was the foreman of this level and had decided that the best thing we could do during the week would be to get down a good solid floor. It was a tall order. Many of the joists had to be replaced or shored up, and most of the floor was gone. To do any work we had to walk on plywood laid across what supporting beams were left.

I was first assigned, along with two other women, to clean up the floor that still remained in one corner of the back section. We scraped up layers of old glue and paint and patches of linoleum that were stuck to it, removed nails that were sticking up, and had made it perfectly smooth, when one of the men came over with a sheet of plywood and said, “Nail it down.” Nail it down? Before we left home I had told Jimmy that I would do anything but hammer. I didn’t think I could use a hammer and I didn’t want to use a hammer. We nailed it down! At first it took me fifteen or twenty strokes for each nail, but before the week was over I could drive one in with only four or five strokes!

The next day Jimmy made me foreman of the back half of the second floor, which would eventually be two apartments. And with three other women and an occasional male volunteer, before the week was over we had laid the subfloor and the floor in our entire section—and with a great feeling of accomplishment. We had learned to leave a nail’s width of space between the sheets of plywood we put down so that they could expand without buckling, to measure the spaces accurately, and to use a power saw to cut the plywood to fit the spaces. We were pleased and proud. The last day when we were racing against the clock to get our section finished, we had one piece of flooring left to put in place. It was in an awkward spot that fit around a brick chimney and tapered off at one end. We measured it, sawed the wood, held our breath, and dropped it in place. It was perfect! A perfect fit! We screamed, “We did it! We did it!”

Jimmy came running from the front of the building: “What’s the matter? Who’s hurt?” When he saw what we had done, even he was impressed—and we all signed our names to that one piece of flooring on the second floor in a new apartment in a New York City slum.

What I learned anew from this experience was something that has been a valuable lesson all of my life. “You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.” If I can be a carpenter, dear reader, you can be anything you want to be!

Our initial exposure to Habitat for Humanity had not been so positive. During the last few weeks in the White House we had begun paying more attention to the newspapers from home because we were eager to catch up on current events of a local nature. There were a good many articles about our return home. Most of them were friendly. One was decidedly not.

It seemed that there was an organization called Habitat for Humanity with headquarters in Americus, Georgia, our county seat, whose director was irate because we had been invited to some kind of dedication ceremony in Plains that we had not seen fit to attend. The invitation had been one of many hundreds we had received at the White House and had been routinely declined by staff members. However, the Habitat people had taken the negative response as a personal affront and made loud complaints to the regional press. They insisted that the members of the First Family, claiming to be concerned about the poor, were insensitive to the housing needs of those in their own hometown.

In those early months at home, when we were both so occupied with our writing and teaching as well as with the presidential library, we hadn’t given much thought to other activities. But almost every weekend, among the visitors to our church were families who had come to Americus to work and train as volunteers with Habitat for Humanity. They were from many states and foreign countries, and all of them were idealistic and dedicated—people who were giving a few months or sometimes even years of their lives to build homes for the poor in need. They were eager to tell us about their experiences, and the more we learned, the more interested we became. When we finally expressed interest in getting additional information about their work and how we might help, we were set upon by Habitat’s extraordinary founder and director, Millard Fuller.

Finally, half in self-defense, we asked Millard to come to our home to tell us more about Habitat and to list some of the contributions he thought we might make. He arrived bearing two typewritten pages of suggestions. Alongside each was a place to mark “yes” or “no.”

After Millard left we talked together about whether we really wanted to take on a new project. But Millard’s enthusiasm had been contagious, and we finally marked the “yes” places to most of his requests. And we’ve never been sorry. Even for a former president of the United States it isn’t easy to find a project that is at the same time exciting, somewhat controversial, inspirational, challenging, unpredictable, worthwhile, successful, and international in scope. But such is Habitat for Humanity.

Millard Fuller was an ambitious young Alabama attorney whose competence and drive made him a millionaire at a very early age. His wealth and reputation were rapidly expanding when his wife, Linda, decided that there was more to life than the accumulation of money. She rarely saw her husband. He worked all the time, leaving home early in the morning and returning late at night. Their two children were growing up hardly knowing their father. Giving up hope of ever being compatible with her husband, she left him and went to New York to be with friends. Millard soon followed, and they were eventually reconciled. They agreed to start all over again, this time with a commitment to let God be the guiding focus in their lives—and they gave away all their money to charity.

Their search for a new life over the next few years led them eventually to Koinonia Farms, a nonprofit farm that uses its income to help the needy, not far from Plains. Koinonia is operated by volunteers from all over the country who come for various lengths of time, work in the fields and in the processing and marketing of the crops—peanuts, pecans, fruitcakes, candies. The profit from these activities is used to help transients and the many needy families in the area. The farm had been founded in the 1940s by Reverend Clarence Jordan as an integrated Christian community in the deep rural South with the purpose of bearing witness in a practical way against a segregated society. It survived the harassment of the fifties and sixties and is still a thriving community ministering to low-income people in our county.

The Fullers stayed at Koinonia for several years, helping to build homes for poor people, and were so impressed with the impact on the lives of those who received the homes that they decided to see if the idea would work in a Third World setting. In 1973 the Fullers moved to Zaire in central Africa. With a contribution of three thousand dollars from Koinonia and the support of many Christian denominations, they launched a program to build 162 houses in the city of Mbandaka. Before long the project had expanded to other villages, and Habitat for Humanity was born.

The purpose of the organization is to supplement much-needed private and public housing for the poor and not to supplant it in any way. No state or federal funds are accepted for the projects, nor is the program based on charity. The prospective owners are required to work hundreds of hours on their own homes and on those for their neighbors. They must also pay the actual costs, which Habitat is able to minimize by careful design, the use of volunteer labor, and locally available building materials. The payments are minimal because the homesteaders are given twenty years to pay, and Habitat follows the Old Testament admonition (Exodus 22:25), “If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, you are not to act as a creditor to him; you shall not charge him interest.”

The monthly principal payments that are required from the homesteaders must be made in a timely fashion, because they are used immediately to buy materials for the next home. This policy tends to be self-policing. On one occasion in Zaire a few families decided that they really did not have to make their payments because they were sure they would not be evicted. All Habitat wor...