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“So great to be alive when the eulogies are read…”
Phil Ochs was right, and that’s why I will read one for Jimmy Carter.
When I came up with cancer, there was little time between diagnosis and surgery, but in that time and also during my recovery, I heard from family, friends, and enemies enough to confer a warm sense of satisfaction that most understood the values I tried to serve and honored my efforts even when I fell short.
Especially when I fell short. Even before cancer struck, I was at the age of coulda woulda shoulda. But it turned out that, in my emotional rearview mirror, my failures were smaller than they appeared. Cancer showed me I had the love of my friends and the respect of my enemies —the kinds of feelings that can only be smoked out by mortal danger.
I was moved to discuss President Carter when he was hospitalized again on Veterans Day for a procedure to relieve pressure on his brain from a slow bleed that had gone undetected when he fell on October 6. At the time, all we knew was the he got a terrible looking black eye that showed up on the news when reporters were documenting his immediate return to work on a home under construction by his signature charity, Habitat for Humanity.
The first time I heard of Jimmy Carter, I was working on the campaign of one of his…
