He oversaw national park site devoted to the extraordinary, ordinary life of Jimmy Carter
Gary Ingram remembers the first time he met Jimmy Carter.
It was 2007, a hot summer day in Plains, Georgia.
Ingram was in his late 30s, working for the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., when he made a trip to a part of America that to him — someone who grew up in California and Yosemite National Park — felt quite foreign.
He headed to rural Georgia for what was “basically an interview” for the job as superintendent of what is now known as Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. And in this case — unlike, for instance, when Ingram had been at the Carl Sandburg Home in North Carolina — the interview involved meeting with the person to whom the site was devoted.
He recalls pulling through the gate and seeing Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter waiting in front of their home.
“I’ve never met a president before,” he said. “I get out and they welcome me with open arms, and ask me to come into the house. And we sit down and start talking about the National Park Service.”
There are plenty of other NPS sites devoted to preserving presidential history. But ever since one was created in Plains in 1987, there hasn’t been one quite like it.
Because Plains isn’t just the place where Jimmy Carter was born in 1924 – in a hospital, a first for someone who became president of the United States – it’s where he continued to live after his presidency, not far from the farm where he grew up, in the only house he and his wife of 77 years ever owned.
It’s a two-bedroom ranch, built in 1961, assessed a few years ago at $167,000. It’s where he decided he wanted to spend his final days — not in a hospital, but at home with family.
It’s where he died Sunday at age 100.
Jimmy Carter was longest-living president in U.S. history. His four-decade post-presidency wasn’t simply long. It was simultaneously extraordinary and ordinary.
He will be buried beside Rosalynn — who died Nov. 19, 2023 at age 96 — on a sloping lawn next to the home, under a willow tree, near a pond he helped dig.
Their home, already deeded to the National Park Service, will become a museum, joining the existing pieces of this NPS site. The Carter boyhood farm. The old high school. The small train depot where, on a December day in 1974, Jimmy Carter announced he was running for president in 1976.
The Carters made this decision public more than a decade ago. The president could’ve chosen to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery or the Carter Center or any number of other places. He chose Plains, knowing what that decision would mean for the town and its national park site long after he was gone.
This is the site Gary Ingram managed for seven years.
'Just call me Jimmy'
There are many who met Jimmy Carter. And many who made the trek to Plains to attend one of his Sunday school classes. But Ingram didn’t just have one passing moment with the former president. That first conversation was just the start of his time with someone whom he says “was the first president I remember.”
In 1977, the year Carter took office, Ingram turned 8. More than anything, he remembers being struck by Carter’s Southern accent.
“I was going to Yosemite Elementary, walking around and saying, ‘Hi, I’m Jimmy Carter,’” he said, mimicking the accent.
And there he was 30 years later, sitting on a couch in Carter’s home, hearing that accent coming from the ex-president. It was a somewhat surreal first conversation. And it was followed by many more with President Carter.
That’s how Ingram always refers to him. He says that after about nine months on the job, Carter said to him, “Hey, just call me Jimmy.” He appreciated the gesture. It was what everyone else in Plains called the ex-president, either Jimmy or Mr. Jimmy. But Ingram couldn’t bring himself to do it. It always was President Carter — even after the Carters made sure he and his family felt like a part of the community.
As superintendent, Ingram had his routine. Most days he would go to the park headquarters, check in with his staff, grab a coffee and head to the Carter compound. He’d walk the grounds, making sure everything was maintained.
“Some days, President Carter would wave me in,” he said. “So I’d go in and have a cup of coffee with them.”
This wasn’t a presidential version of “Tuesdays with Morrie,” where a younger man drops by the home of a dying old man and learns some life lessons. Ingram did learn life lessons. But even though Carter was in his 80s, he still was remarkably active and involved with things he was passionate about. Faith and family. Building affordable housing. Fostering free and fair elections. Writing books. Preserving special places, including Plains.
Jimmy Carter's environmental legacy
Part of Carter’s legacy is what he did to protect America’s land and water, from Georgia to Alaska. The historian Douglas Brinkley told the Washington Post that Carter will “go down, along with people like Theodore Roosevelt and FDR, as one of the greatest conservation presidents or environmental presidents of all time.”
As Georgia governor, he pushed for protections for the Chattooga River. As president, he not only established the Chattahoochee National River Recreation Area — a 48-mile stretch of river near Atlanta — he worked with Congress, shortly after losing the 1980 election, to pass the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), a landmark law that doubled the size of the National Park System.
When Ingram worked in Washington, D.C., his job involved the Alaska parks. He’s probably one of the few people who have actually read every word of ANILCA. So when he ended up in Plains, he asked Carter how he was able to work on this massive piece of legislation during the time of something many remember about his presidency — the Iran hostage crisis.
“He said it was his distraction from all these other world events,” Ingram said.
Ingram doesn’t have a hard time picturing Carter multi-tasking between a big world event and small details of a park. He tells the story of a time when Carter wanted to talk about about adding a chicken coop to the boyhood farm that’s now part of the Plains park. The former president told him to come to the back porch of his house.
Ingram knocked on the sliding glass door and Carter waved him in. He was sitting at his desk, in shorts and a T-shirt. They started to talk when Carter got a call.
It was during the Arab Spring movement of the early 2010s. And the person on the other end clearly was someone important. So Ingram stood up to excuse himself. Carter motioned for him to stay.
While Ingram sat there, trying not to listen to the conversation, Carter kept scratching away at a piece of paper in front of him. When the conversation ended, Carter hung up the phone, apologized for the interruption, and handed Ingram the piece of paper.
It was a drawing of a chicken coop. Carter had written down details, including the dimensions and the kind of wood. He even had drawn some chickens into the coop, labeled what type they should be.
“And I was like, ‘How is this even possible that you can have that high-level conversation and at the same time scratch out these incredible, beautiful drawings?’” he said. “It was like a magic trick. But he could do it. You have a genuinely decent man with a very high IQ who can multitask better than anybody I’ll ever meet in my life. It was quite the combination.”
The most important trait
During his years in Plains, Ingram saw glimpses of Carter in all kinds of roles from his past, everything from Southern peanut farmer to Commander in Chief. All, he says, felt genuine. He never did see Carter teach Sunday school. He went to Maranatha Baptist Church twice with his family, saw the long line of people, and decided not take up any seats in the small church.
“Folks came from all over the world to see him,” he said. “I got to see him every day. … When I told President Carter why we weren’t there, he seemed to appreciate it. He just said, ‘You do have a church, right?’”
Ingram assured him that he did. And although he never saw Carter delivering a Sunday school lesson, he says that simply spending time with Carter on many days of the week, watching him live his life, made his own faith deepen.
Some of Ingram’s favorite memories are the relatively mundane ones. Like when Rosalynn was picking blueberries in the yard, but realized she had forgotten to bring a bowl. He took off his hat, the iconic flat-brimmed ranger hat, and had her fill it.
They went inside, cleaned off the berries, and while the Carters sat and had their cereal with blueberries, he poured another cup of coffee and ate a few with them.
Or there was the time President Carter “scared the daylights” out of him.
Carter had suggested that they go feed the fish in the pond. He gave Ingram a cup of food and told him to just throw some of it into the water. Ingram figured there were a few small fish in the pond.
“There were these huge fish there,” he said. “And when I threw the food out, they were like sharks watching me. The water exploded and I jumped back so far that I fell on my butt. I said, ‘You knew that was going to happen, didn’t you?’ And he was just laughing and laughing.”
If Ingram himself felt a bit like a fish out of water when he arrived in Plains, that quickly changed. Carter told him he should live in Plains. He couldn’t find a home there, but he and his family settled in nearby Americus. He raised children there. He bought a piece of land and a tractor. He talked to the ex-president about two of his passions: faith and farming.
“That was my new life,” he said. “I had completely found a sense of place.”
When he was offered a job as superintendent of Cumberland Island National Seashore, he really didn’t want to leave. But he figured it was a good career move, a next step that would take him to a place with a long history of complicated land and people issues.
Carter knew Cumberland Island quite well. Ingram recalls him saying, “Gary, if you’re able to pull off that, I’m going to get you a job in the State Department to work on Middle East peace.”
Ingram spent nearly 10 years at Cumberland before becoming superintendent at Rocky Mountain National Park last year.
In his office in St. Marys, Georgia, he displayed a framed letter from President Carter, dated May 6, 2014. Carter wrote that he was disappointed to hear Ingram would be leaving Plains, but wished him well.
He also has a wooden figure, basically a caricature of Carter. It’s a gift of sorts from the president.
“He absolutely hated this thing,” Ingram recalled with a laugh. “He said, ‘You take it.’ … So now I always have President Carter with me.”
More than anything, though, he says he has memories of those years and the lessons he took from his time with President Carter. Work hard. Do the right thing. Be kind and honest. It might not always be the easiest path to take, but it’s one that will make a difference in your family, community, country and world.
“President Carter solidified my belief in helping others,” Ingram said. ”He taught me that even though we may not all agree on whatever issue, living a life focused on helping others is the most important trait we can have.”
Reach Mark Woods at mwoods@jacksonville.com.