Reassuring a gym full of college students that everyone faces adversity throughout their lives, former president Jimmy Carter said Wednesday night he relies on his religious faith to deal with his own challenges.
“All of us have to face the prospect, at the end of our life, of death,” Carter said. “When I reach adversity, I turn to prayer.”
Carter’s comments came about midway through his 34th annual Town Hall Meeting with Emory University’s freshman class. Some 1,300 students had packed the bleachers at the Woodruff P.E. Center to quiz him about everything from his views on mass prison incarceration to the first thing he says to his wife of 69 years every morning. Despite — or perhaps it was because of Carter’s recent cancer diagnosis — when the 90-year-old emerged waving at at the front of the gym a little past 8 p.m., his young audience cheered as if he were a star hoops player arriving for the big game.
“I think it’s really cool,” said Andrew Bi, a chemistry major originally from Melbourne, Australia, who’d shown up two hours before the event’s start to claim a good seat. “You’re always hearing on the news about what a president does on a national and international scale. And then you come here and find out he’s a real person who does normal, real things. It’s such an interesting contrast.”
The town hall has become a cherished autumn ritual at Emory, where Carter holds the title of University Distinguished Professor. But it felt even more meaningful this year, given the former president’s recent brain melanoma diagnosis and the fact that he is being treated by a team of doctors from Emory’s own Winship Cancer Institute. And it all ended with Emory’s outgoing president James Wagner surprising Carter by presenting him with the university’s prestigious President’s Medal.
Still, for all the dramatic subtext, the mood in the room was hardly downbeat. The town hall, which was closed to the public, started with an appearance by “Dooley,” a skeletal-like creature that is the school’s unofficial mascot. Carter had been seated in an armchair onstage, but announced his intention to stand an answer questions for the hourlong session. the students had submitted the questions in writing. All of the slips of paper were then placed inside a cylindrical metal drum, which was spun repeatedly so that questions were selected at random.
The whole thing had an enjoyably unpredictable, this-is-not-your-usual-press-conference feel.
So much so, that Carter actually pronounced himself stumped by a question about his favorite “fun fact.” After rambling on for awhile about his love of fly fishing, the former president grinned, leaned into the microphone and said, “I’ll have to study up on fun facts.”
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