A Valentine’s wish inspired by former president Carter

In early June of 2017, I climbed into a U-Haul truck with my cat, my shih tzu and all of my belongings, or at least the belongings that had made the cut after a radical downsizing, and headed north to Burlington. As I passed the city limits of Columbus on my drive from southwest Georgia to northeast Vermont, it dawned on me that I had never been to Jimmy Carter’s Sunday school class.

I had lived in a town that was less than an hour’s drive from Carter’s church in Plains, Ga., where people could attend his Sunday school class almost every week.

Going to the former president’s Sunday school class was something many of my friends and neighbors had done. I had always meant to attend, but for almost 17 years I had put it off.

I never met Carter, but I came close many times, and many of my friends have stories about the experience. People of all sorts of religious leanings, and none, have told me how inspiring his Sunday school class was.

For the last 12 years of my life in that city, jokingly referred to as being on Georgia’s west coast, since it’s on the Chattahoochee River, the border between the Peach State and Alabama, I was the marketing director of the Springer Opera House, the State Theatre of Georgia.

Now, here, ensconced in another town on another state’s west coast, I found myself reflecting on Carter’s impact on my home state and the nation after his death at the end of December. I’ve heard so many wonderful firsthand stories about the 39th president, some humorous, some profound, many of them warm and inspiring. I’ve never heard a story about Carter being angry or rude, nothing but warm and welcoming.

Every year, in addition to six productions on our main stage theatre and four productions in our second space where shows that benefited from a smaller, more intimate hall, the Springer produced four children’s theatre plays. A few years after the publishing of “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer,” a children’s book he wrote and daughter Amy illustrated, based on bedtime stories Carter had told his children when he was at home on leave from the Navy, our theatre’s assistant director decided to adapt the story for the stage.

The adaptation happened with Carter’s blessing. The assistant and managing directors drove up to Atlanta to the Carter Center to discuss the project with him. As they were ushered into an office, meeting the former president and shaking hands, the managing director thought to compliment him on an award he had recently received.

“Congratulations on the Nobel Prize,” our managing director said, then added as he realized, “I’ll never have the opportunity to say that to someone again.”

The opening night of “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer” was a special performance the public wasn’t allowed to attend. Because of security concerns, the performance was reserved for the Carter family, secret service agents and a select group of invited guests. During the intermission, while Rosalynn was elsewhere, the managing director was talking with Carter, who told him his wife didn’t really like the Springer.

Of course, our managing director was horrified, appalled, and his mind raced, considering what he and the theatre might have done and what we could do to heal her aggrieved feelings.

As it turned out, the slight had not come from the theatre, but from Carter himself.

For folks from Plains, Columbus was the big town. When the Carters were adolescents, and for many decades after, the classy thing for young men to do was to take their dates out to eat in the big town, followed by a play at the Springer.

Although Jimmy first met Rosalynn just days after she was born and he was 3, their relationship started later. His mother was a nurse who helped deliver Rosalynn. During childhood, his sister was good friends with her, but Jimmy and Rosalynn didn’t start dating until the summer before his senior year at the Naval Academy.

They had known each other for years before the sparks ignited, but once the romance was kindled it quickly heated up.

Still, as fledgling romances often do, their relationship had its up and downs. As many young couples do, they went through a period when they decided that they didn’t need to break up, but they should see other people.

The former president told our managing director that he had made the mistake of believing that they actually were supposed to date other people. But Rosalynn didn’t see it that way.

After they worked out whatever issue they were going through and reunited as a committed couple, exclusive to each other, she learned that during their relationship hiatus, Jimmy Carter had taken another girl to Columbus to a play at the Springer.

After four children, a term as Georgia governor and as president, all sorts of amazing experiences in Washington and internationally, building more than 4,000 homes for Habitat for Humanity and more than 77 years of marriage, Rosalynn Carter was still bothered that her boyfriend had a date with another girl.

Which is exactly as it should be. The staff at the Springer went from being aghast at what the theatre possibly had done to upset her, to thrilled to work at a place that sparked such passion.

With Valentine’s just days away, it’s timely to wish for everyone a relationship where the romance still smolders so intensely after almost eight decades.