Editor’s note: This article has been updated after the former president’s burial site and other National Park Service sites around Plains were closed to the public Wednesday amid the federal government shutdown.
PLAINS — A boy on a bicycle breezed down a country lane earlier this week toward Jimmy Carter’s final resting place.
He was in the former president’s hometown to sing and play music at a Wednesday evening celebration at Maranatha Baptist Church, a salute to the native son and governor.
Carter died here Dec. 29 in hospice. He would have turned 101 on Wednesday.
The young bicyclist’s name was Reed Elliotte. He’s a ninth grader from southern Kentucky who describes himself as a presidential historian.
Elliotte, 15, had been to Plains many times, and on occasion, he met and spoke to Carter, his favorite president.
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
This wasn’t his first visit to the gravesite, where the nation’s 39th president was laid to rest nine months ago in a plot beside former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023.
The Carters’ burial place, on land not far from their house, opened to the public in July. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day, typically, visitors can pay their respects.
That wasn’t the case Wednesday, though, when the first day of the federal government shutdown coincided with the former president’s Oct. 1 birthdate.
National Park Service sites in Plains were closed amid the shutdown. That included the Plains High School Visitor Center, Carter’s boyhood home and farm, and the Carter Gardens, where the former first couple are buried.
A public wreath laying was expected to take place Wednesday, akin to one for the late first lady on her birthday in August. A visitor told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that a handful of Park Service employees had gathered there about 10 a.m. for what some locals said may have been a private wreath ceremony.
“It is sad that we can’t go in and celebrate him on his birthday, but it is what it is,” Stephanie Young, who owns Southwest Trophy and Gift, a shop in downtown Plains, said by phone. “It’s out of our control.”
As of late morning, there were no messages on the Park Service website or its Carter-related social media pages informing the public of the closures. The agency’s Facebook page for the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park did, however, post this greeting at 6:51 a.m.: “Happy Birthday President Carter! … Those who knew him remind us that his greatness was not only global but also deeply local, grounded in his love for Plains, Georgia, and his lifelong belief in the strength of community.”
The burial site is southwest Georgia farmland meets Augusta National — reverent yet humble, mind you, manicured but not too. The Carter gravestones are fewer than 150 yards from U.S. 280, where 18-wheelers throb past well within earshot, lugging everything from pulpwood to double-wide trailers.
The graves are positioned on a slight rise, amid a carpet of sod, shrouded by a curved bed of azaleas and a row of white vincas. The plot is a break in a hodgepodge woodland, a residential refuge of oak and pine. A lone pecan tree stands nearby. Butterflies dart. An American chestnut sapling rises beside a small pond. There’s a weeping willow, a johnboat upturned.
It is a place of solitude, reflection and refined simplicity.
Credit: National Park Service
Credit: National Park Service
A stone walkway swings wide of the graves. A trio of trailside markers the size of index cards ever so gently remind guests to keep off the lawn there.
The trailside markers bear a three-word message. They read, as author and Sunday school teacher Jimmy Carter might phrase it: “Stay On Path.”
Some folks, though, can’t resist. They inch closer — one, two, three steps onto the grass — to snap photos of the twin Carter graves.
Elliotte, who on this day earlier this week arrived on a bike from just down the road in the heart of Plains, first visited the burial site in August.
He signed the guest book that day. The next signature in the log, which is kept daily by the National Park Service, was that of Mary Jean Eisenhower, granddaughter of the 34th president.
On this day, Monday, Elliotte stands overlooking the Carter couple’s plot. He said being there, on what is his third trip to Sumter County this year, lends him an air of calm.
“When you’re in Plains, especially for me, you feel this sense of peace that you don’t feel anywhere else,” Elliotte said. “Standing right here definitely shows it.”
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
A couple of hours later, one of Monday’s next visitors cruised in by car on his way from Florida to the Tennessee hills.
“I thought he was a good man,” Dale Schmitz, 68, of Tampa, said of Carter. “Especially after his presidency, all the good things he did, going around the world and building houses for people and feeding the hungry.”
Schmitz noticed the still-visible patchwork of sod atop the late president’s grave.
“It hasn’t been that long since he died,” Schmitz said. “(The grass) hasn’t blended in.”
The Carters, who grew up in Plains and lived in the same modest ranch bungalow they built in 1961, were a familiar sight around town for decades. They rarely appeared in public in their final years amid growing health problems, and the former president entered home hospice in early 2023.
To mark Carter’s birthdate in Atlanta, the nonprofit Carter Center is hosting a ceremony Wednesday, when the U.S. Postal Service is issuing a commemorative “forever” stamp that pays tribute to the former president. USPS services aren’t affected by the government shutdown.
Half a mile or so from the former first couple’s resting place, on Main Street in Plains’ tiny commercial district — a handful of eateries, souvenir shops, a drugstore and an antique mart — the president’s passing has had some impact on business. How much depends on whom you ask.
“Tourism definitely has been down,” Young said at her store Monday., “As far as the businesses, we’re the same, and we’re still trying to promote their legacy and encourage people to keep coming to Plains.”
At the Plains Historic Inn & Antique Mall, manager Myra Chavers said business was “maybe a little less but not a whole lot. We’re not seeing a drastic change. … It’s been steady.”
At Plain Peanuts, a general store and ice cream shop where Jimmy Carter was known to partake of the butter-pecan, clerk Brenda Richardson said business was “slowly picking up,” but the town itself hasn’t changed much in the wake of the Carters’ deaths.
“It’s like they’re still with us to me,” Richardson said. “Because they’re buried there at the house and they’re still where they were, you know, and to me it’s just like they’re still here. I mean, we just don’t see them like we used to.”
A couple of doors down at Plains Trading Post, a souvenir emporium that bills itself as the country’s largest political memorabilia shop, owner Philip Kurland has sensed a slowdown.
“The traffic flow is slower and overall people are spending less,” Kurland said. “The volume is down; things are slower.”
He said he hopes the Park Service’s anticipated opening of the Carter home to tourists at some point will serve as an economic infusion. The house has remained off limits to the public until now.
“When his home is opened,” Kurland said. “I think that’s going to be a whole new ballgame.”
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
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