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Sign-Never Far From Home

Never Far From Home Wayside
Never Far From Home Wayside

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Never Far from Home

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6

With a short walk around this farm you can just take a glimpse of the small, enclosed world that nurtured a future president. Here Jimmy Carter mastered the rules and the roles he would carry all the way to world leadership. In these sun-baked fields and weathered buildings, a young boy worked hard, played fair, and shouldered responsibility. His parents, “Mr. Earl” and “Miss Lillian,” raised four children to value education, community service, their Christian faith, and each other.

Jimmy Carter left his parents’ farm after high school, intending to spend his life as a naval officer. When his father died of cancer in 1953, Jimmy Carter came back to his Georgia roots – but not to this home of his boyhood.

Small Photo: Ensign Carter married Rosalynn Smith, his sister Ruth’s close friend, just after his graduation. When the Carters left their hometown for Norfolk and the Navy, neither expected that life would bring them back to Plains in seven years.

Large Photo: Jimmy Carter, U.S. Naval Academy midshipman, in 1946

Jimmy Carter National Historical Park

Last updated: October 31, 2021