How jimmy carter made an impact on my life

Which is where the afraid part comes in. If his name was on this build, it was going to go well, and he really had high standards for us, and we wanted to meet them. So we tried to live up

to his expectations, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, because we were all volunteers and we didn’t know what the heck we were doing.  Soon I was up on a roof. That was my

first roofing job. He always made a visit to every house on every build.  He would come around usually on Wednesday night. He was fully military, everything needed to flow the way it was

supposed to: “Are you going to be able to finish on time? Can I get you more volunteers? Do you get anything else?” Like, “I want no excuses. You tell me what you need and I’ll get them for

you.” In the early days, he had a lot more energy. He tried to do at least one thing on every house, so someone could say, “Carter installed the railing on my porch.” Or “Carter put the

awning over my front door.” For my first build, he was putting something on the front porch. It was wet and miserable, and he had to walk across a floor, and we were not so thrilled it would

get muddy. It was awkward. We said, “Mr. President, could you just walk on the places where there’s paper?” And it was funny — we had to make him an honorary woman for him to work on the

house. Courtesy Holly Eaton On that first build, I got bit by what is called the “Habititis bug.” Once you get bit, there’s no turning back. Over 27 years as a Habitat volunteer, I’ve built

probably 75 houses total, 31 of which were on a Carter build, both in the U.S. and in eight foreign countries — the Philippines, South Korea, Mexico, Canada, Hungary, South Africa, India and

Haiti. I’m usually a house leader, which means I’m responsible for the volunteers and seeing that the house is built the right way. On the Carter Work Project, it’s a blitz build. You start

off with a slab, usually. And the goal is that the house is complete by the end of the week. I think the most we’ve done was 325 houses in the Philippines. Over the years, Jimmy mellowed,

and as I saw more of him, I lost my fear of him and saw him as just another wonderful human being. He’s so extraordinary that you couldn’t dream of ever being like him. He’s just such an

amazing person on so many levels, and he remained sharp through his 90s. He had a tremendous memory. And you couldn’t hold him down. He absolutely lives his faith, and he’s a former

president, but he really looks at people as if they are on the same level.