25 years later, the Carters are still building houses
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2008/05/15/habitat_0516.html
By JIM AUCHMUTEY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/15/08
Jimmy Carter strapped on his tool belt and slipped a hammer into its
loop like a gunslinger holstering a pistol. As he started to measure a
sheet of plywood, a battery of cameras followed every move from a
platform 30 feet away.
A familiar ritual of American do-gooding was unfolding. For the 25th
straight year, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were devoting a week of their
tightly booked lives to Habitat for Humanity.
=46rom left, Executive Director for Habitat for Humanity in Mobile
County Brenda C. Lawless and Jimmy Carter speak with future homeowners
who are gathered in front of each house for a photo with the former
President at one of Habitat for Humanity work project sites in Mobile,
Ala. Tuesday.
Former President Jimmy Carter works on a house with other volunteers
at one of the Habitat for Humanity work project sites in Mobile, Ala.
Photos: Carter builds Habitat home
ABOUT HABITAT:
=97 Founded in Americus in 1976, it has operational headquarters there
and administrative offices in Atlanta.
=97 Though it considers itself a Christian ministry, Habitat is
nondenominational.
=97 Homeowners do not get houses for free. They make a down payment and
have to qualify for an interest-free mortgage. They're also required
to work many hours on other homes as well as theirs.
=97 Habitat works through local affiliates in 90 countries and 50
states, and with numerous partners like the Salvation Army and the
Home Depot Foundation.
The Carters have become so identified with Habitat that many people
think the former president founded the Georgia-based housing ministry.
"When I fly, I'll go around the plane and shake everyone's hand,"
Carter said during a break this week, his own right hand bruised
purple from a run-in with a claw hammer. "It's surprising how many
people ask me, not about the Middle East peace process or the health
programs we work on at the Carter Center for 51 weeks of the year, but
about this one week. They really like those houses we build."
Clearly, the Carters have been very good for Habitat.
The nonprofit organization has grown steadily since they've promoted
it, and now builds and renovates twice as many homes in a year as it
did in its first decade and a half put together. In fiscal 2007, that
amounted to 49,000 homes worldwide.
Just as clearly, Habitat has been very good for the Carters.
"Habitat jump-started Carter's extraordinary post-presidency," said
Douglas Brinkley of Rice University, one of his biographers. "His
stock was down when he began working with Habitat. When he picked up
that hammer, he started to become a folk hero."
Carter was 59 and a recently defeated one-term president when he first
volunteered with Habitat in 1984.
Now 83, he moves a bit stiffly around work sites and takes more
frequent breathers. But the carpenter in him still attacks the job
vigorously. Co-workers in Mobile snapped photos of him hoisting
plywood like a man half his age.
Carter was running for president in 1976 when Habitat was founded in
Americus, a few miles from his home in Plains. The organization grew
out of a controversial Christian farming community, Koinonia, where
Millard Fuller, a former marketing whiz, and his wife, Linda, decided
to devote their born-again lives to eliminating poverty housing.
During their final weeks in the White House, Carter read in the
Americus paper that Fuller had criticized him for not attending a
Habitat home dedication.
Rosalynn Carter was piqued. "I wasn't sure I wanted to meet Millard
after that," she recalled.
But they did, and they were impressed. The former president agreed to
serve on Habitat's board, and he and his wife pitched in on a house-
raising in Americus.
Their commitment broadened in 1984 when Carter was in New York for a
speaking engagement and decided to jog past a six-story apartment
building Habitat was renovating in Lower Manhattan.
"It was horrendous," he said. "A dilapidated old building with 330
windows =97 all broken =97 and the bottom two floors heaped with garbage.
People were living on it, building fires to keep warm and cook dope.
When I got there, some college volunteers were trying to clean up the
mess. On the spur of the moment, I said maybe we should come back and
help."
A re****ter heard the comment and wrote a story. A few months later,
the Carters and 40 others boarded a Trailways bus for New York, where
a crowd gathered outside the building to watch and chanted, "Go, Jimmy
go!"
The Carters returned to finish the job in 1985 and decided to make
Habitat work projects an annual tradition.
Over the years, the Carters have helped build homes in 16 states and
eight nations. They plan to add to the list next year when the project
heads to the Mekong Delta in Southeast Asia.
"They've given me no indication they want to stop," says Habitat chief
executive Jonathan Reckford, who succeeded Fuller in 2006.
The Carters have built in South Africa, across the Philippines, on the
tense border between South and North Korea. Their diciest moment
actually came in the United States, in the Liberty City section of
Miami, where a drive-by shooter missed his target and struck one of
their co-workers in the hard hat, inflicting a flesh wound.
"The Secret Service asked us not to work on roofs after that," Carter
said. "They said we were too exposed."
Two years ago, during a particularly meaningful week, the Carters
built near the village where his mother, Miss Lillian, served in the
Peace Corps.
Carter remembers it for another reason as well.
"Brad Pitt showed up on the second day," he said, impressed with the
effect his celebrity had on their building schedule. "We finished a
day early because so many people wanted to work with him. He worked
hard =97 just like Garth Brooks did yesterday."
Carter has always been known as a no-nonsense builder.
"That's one hard-working man," said Willie Wilkerson, a vocational
teacher in College Park, who has participated in 23 of the 25
projects. He was the Carters' crew chief at one of the first ones, in
Charlotte, and has never forgotten the president's suggestion when he
saw journalists standing around observing.
"He told me we ought to find something for those writers to do: clean
up, move lumber =97 something."
The Carters wanted to build on the Gulf Coast to draw attention to the
lingering effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. They started last
Sunday in Mississippi and moved on to New Orleans. In between, they
made a stop in Mobile, where 10 houses were under construction in a
working-class area near the University of South Alabama.
Mobile didn't suffer as much destruction as its neighbors to the west,
but the storms did pummel its housing market.
"We had so many disaster recovery workers that landlords raised
rents," said Brenda Carson Lawless, director of the Mobile Habitat
affiliate. "It really hurt low-income people."
One of those affected was excited to learn that the Carters would be
lending a hand on her house.
Africa Locke, a 29-year-old divorced mother of two, was having trouble
paying $650 a month in rent on her computer programmer's salary.
She signed up for Habitat 18 months ago, attended cl***** and started
working on other people's houses =97 part of the required 300 hours of
"sweat equity." In return, she'll get a three-bedroom home and a no-
interest mortgage with payments of about $350 a month.
"This is going to be the first place I've ever owned," she said. "How
many people can say a president helped build their house? I mean,
whoa!"
The Carters spent the morning sawing and hammering plywood onto the
frame of Locke's house. After lunch, they posed for photos with each
work crew and presented each homeowner with a Bible and best wishes.
"I hope we're doing a good job," Carter told Locke, who flashed a
Carterish smile back at him.
Then, the Carters strolled toward a van that would take them to
Pascagoula, Miss., and another cluster of homes-in-progress. As they
often do, the former first couple was holding hands.
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