When he got a text from friends with the news that Jimmy Carter had died, Scott Morris decided there was only one place to go: Manuel’s Tavern.
The former president launched his 1970 campaign for governor at the Democratic institution in Poncey-Highland, where a portrait of John F. Kennedy hangs behind the bar. In the hours after Carter’s death, the bar stools and booths quickly filled with patrons reminiscing about Carter’s legacy.
Morris’s dad campaigned for Carter, and a close friend works for him. This day was one Morris had long anticipated, but he said the news still didn’t seem real. Carter’s presence in Georgia has just been larger than life.
“The Carter family is a global presence, but it’s also something that’s so down home,” he said.
A stone’s throw from the Carter Presidential Center, which was closed Sunday evening, a television over the bar was tuned to CNN. When a patron asked to change the channel on another TV to football, a bartender exclaimed, “Jimmy Carter just died eight seconds ago.”
Raymond Rebsamen was sipping an IPA at the bar when he looked up and saw the news of Carter’s death.
Carter was someone worth emulating, Rebsamen said.
”We need an army of him,” the 68-year-old McDonough resident said. Rebsamen said he admired how Carter spent the years after he left office, working with Habitat for Humanity and trying to help “common people.”
”He was a real special person,” Rebsamen said. “He wasn’t about the big money.”
Sonya Cook also learned the news at Manuel’s, sitting in a wooden booth near the bar’s entrance. Cook then immediately got the attention of David Brakebill who had his back to the television screen and told him the news.
The pair weren’t shocked by his death, but that didn’t stop them from sharing stories about what he meant to them, even if they didn’t exactly care about his policies while he was in office.
In the late 1980s, Cook remembered seeing Carter and his wife Rosalynn as they shopped at a Home Depot store. As Rosalynn was busy picking out items with an entourage of people alongside her, Jimmy Carter sat nearby and greeted others with a smile on his face.
”He was very sweet,” Cook said. Brakebill, a Democrat for most of his life, said Carter lived a wonderful one.
”I know that I don’t look at death as an ending, but a beginning,” he added.
Kathy Pipkin was seated nearby at Manuel’s with tears in her eyes. Carter was the first person she was old enough to vote for as a wide-eyed teenager venturing into the Limelight disco club back in November 1976. Pipkin has voted in every election since.
”He was an outstanding man, before during and after his presidency,” she said.
Inside her Candler Park home, the 68-year-old said she still holds onto her decades-old driver’s license that has Carter’s picture on it from when he was the governor. But it’s too important for the sock drawer, so she keeps it locked in a safe.
”It’s one of my treasures,” she said.
Both Pipkin and her partner, Craig Rafuse, also learned of Carter’s death upon entering Manuel’s. After ordering a pitcher of beer, she wiped away her tears with a cloth as Rafuse recalled his memories of the former president, which started more than 30 years ago.
While playing in his band at an Earth Day event at Emory University, where Carter was scheduled to attend, Rafuse had his eyes closed while playing the guitar. He then opened them and saw Carter within feet of him.
”The band sounds great,” Carter told him casually, while shaking his hand.
”I think he’s kind of one of the last people we’ll see that sort of still had the values that meant something to me,” Rafuse said. “I’m gonna miss him. I’ve been to The Carter Center a few times, and I’ve been to the museum a long, long time ago. Makes me want to go back.”
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