Jimmy Carter is my favorite person who has ever held the office of President of the United States. Just about everything I have heard about him tells what an awesome person he is. And he is also the only President I have ever met (and he was a sitting President at the time). Not that he’d remember the meeting. We were on another trip to Florida (1979, this time, so I haven’t covered the trip in my My Travel Memories topics yet) and we decided to take a side trip to Plains, Georgia, which is President Carter’s home town. President Carter was in town at the time and we stood with a crowd of gawkers waiting for him to come out of church, of all things.
President Carter came out and my mom grabbed my hand and pushed it through the crowd, yelling for President Carter to shake my hand, which he did.
And now he has metastatic cancer. All of our heroes have to die eventually, I guess. 90 years is a good run. He raised his children to adulthood and saw most of his grandchildren grow up. But I am still distressed by this news. I can only pray that President Carter and his physicians have the wisdom to make the best possible choices for his care.