Children Weren't All That Miss Lillian Raised

A REMARKABLE MOTHER

By Jimmy Carter

Simon & Schuster. 222 pp. $22.95

Here is former president Jimmy Carter reminiscing about his upbringing on the family farm: "This was . . . a time of typhus, scarlet and typhoid fevers, diphtheria, and deadly cases of tetanus (lockjaw), influenza, and pneumonia; chronic cases of tapeworm, hookworm, pellagra, trachoma, malaria, mumps, whooping cough, measles, chicken pox, and polio." "Treatment," he continues, "was with aspirin, milk of magnesia, castor oil, 666 Cold Preparation, quinine, paregoric, Mercurochrome, iodine, and various patent medicines that were primarily alcoholic and sometimes opium." So although this little book may have been timed for Mother's Day, it's far from the sentimental tribute one might expect.

"A Remarkable Mother" is an account of how one family's world morphed into another; the story of how one woman grew up and married in backward rural Georgia and how, even before her son became president, she learned to think globally, to take her own place on the public stage. Lillian Carter was a hardworking mother of four, a registered nurse who put in long hours at work and something of a hell-raiser who liked an occasional drink and a good party. She also had a mouth on her. From this narrative, it seems her distinguished son was taken aback by her any number of times.

Lillian was engaged to Earl Carter while she was still in nursing school. When Jimmy, the eldest, was 4, the family moved from the town of Plains, Ga., a couple of miles out to what became the family farm. Jimmy Carter remembers that he and his siblings took very separate paths. Little Jimmy was "outside the house and even away from the yard whenever possible, with my father or my own playmates, and was increasingly employed with livestock and growing crops." His sister Gloria, on the other hand, grew up to be a biker-mama who, with her husband, owned seven Harley-Davidsons by the time she died in 1990. Jimmy's sister Ruth became a famous evangelist, and his younger brother, Billy -- well, he would have his own brand of beer and mild infamy as the family bad boy. "Mama often said that Billy was the smartest of her children," Carter wistfully remembers, "and none of us argued with her."

Again, "A Remarkable Mother" is actually about a family moving from one world into another. But by the very nature of things -- and in contrast, perhaps, to a family like the Kennedys -- it was impossible to pay attention to a "larger plan" because there wasn't any such thing. If some guardian angel had swooped down on the Carter family in the first half of the 20th century and said, "Listen up! Your oldest boy is going to be president of the United States one day! You'd better get your act together so it will look good in the history books," maybe Gloria would have cut down on her Harley-Davidsons and Billy would have quit drinking earlier in the game. But maybe not. They seem to have been a wild bunch. Jimmy's parents gave parties that he remembers with prim disdain: "I always dreaded my parents being hosts. They would push back the dining room table and chairs, use our small breakfast room as a bar, put us in bed early and let their hair down. They must have thought that pulsating music, raucous laughter, and loud talking didn't penetrate our bedroom walls and doors."

While her children grew, Lillian raised and sold her own crops of pecans. She worked sporadically as a nurse. After her husband died in 1953, she "strongly asserted her claim to be matriarch of our family, around whom the lives of all her children and grandchildren revolved. . . . She was quite harsh in her criticism when any of us failed to make a regular pilgrimage to pay our respects." She also acted as a fraternity house mother at Auburn University for eight years. She became very active in the Democratic Party and, most dramatically, a Peace Corps volunteer, serving in India.

She wasn't the mother of a president -- not yet. She was an obscure old lady who, for a long time, was treated with disrespect by the Indian doctors with whom she worked. She made the mistake of bringing food and drink to a dying leper in the street and was roundly reprimanded. She experienced loneliness, friendlessness and despair, and decided to resign from the Corps -- except she didn't. She eventually made friends, joined a discussion group and tried as hard as she could to come to terms with the culture. She gave away all her money and possessions before she left India. When she returned, years later, she was revered almost as a saint.

Back in the United States, Jimmy Carter had become governor, and she moved easily into the role of Miss Lillian, old-lady celebrity and then mother of the president. She published her letters from the Peace Corps. At age 79, she threw out "the first ball at the fourth game of the [World Series] in Dodger Stadium." From her oldest child's point of view, she had always longed to be the center of attention, and now she got her wish. She went on state visits. She said smart-alecky things like "When Jimmy was sixteen, they asked him to teach Sunday School in our church and he was thrilled. He never thought he'd get that high in the world." Her son writes, perhaps a little wearily, that "because of her forceful and demanding personality, Mama remained the matriarch, as intimately involved as possible in the affairs of all her family."

In her personal journey from farm wife to public figure, Lillian Carter (who died in 1983) was part of a larger sea change in American life: from a mostly rural society to an expansive, prosperous, confident player on the world stage. This is an unexpectedly engrossing family chronicle.

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