Well-wishers search for the right words for ailing Jimmy Carter

The conundrum is what to write to a 90-year-old man who’s seen an awful lot and done an awful lot and now, in spite of all that, has cancer moving inside him.

Well, what would you tell him?

“Hang in there. You’re a rock star,” Austyn wrote in alternating blue and green markers. The front of her card included a sticker of a fish and giant letters spelling out “GET WELL SOON!”

“We so value what you do and hope you are ‘back on track soon!’” a family from Venice Beach, Calif., wrote.

“Sending positive energy your way, Mr. President!” another offered.

Since leaving office, Jimmy Carter has spent much of his time sharing hope around the world. On Saturday, a few dozen strangers gave some of the same back to him.

A three-hour event at his presidential library and museum for the public to write birthday cards to his wife morphed into a chance for people to also send him good wishes. They filled some 30 pages of a small book and crafted cards with colored paper and crayons set out for the occasion. The Carters weren’t there to see the visitors.

Some, like the Wightman family from Omaha and the Kitchens from Minden, La., were tourists who had planned trips to the presidential library long before news broke in recent days that surgery to remove a small mass on Carter’s liver had revealed cancer elsewhere.

What do you do for a 90-year-old who has cancer in multiple spots? Paul Kitchens wondered. “I’ve not been one of his biggest fans” as a president, he said. But the trial lawyer said he couldn’t disagree that Carter has had tremendous impact on the world since leaving office.

His wife, Cheryl, an apartment owner and manager, offered no qualifiers about the Carters, citing their efforts from propelling Habitat for Humanity to helping people battling mental illness. “They just live their life to help others where other presidents give speeches and go on book tours.”

Carter has been a prolific book writer himself, of course.

Some people made a special trip to stop by to share good wishes. A 65-year-old mom visited with her middle aged son. A man in a ball cap dropped off two bouquets of fresh-cut flowers.

And a 47-year-old physics and astronomy professor from Clayton State University made a card accented with star stickers. He reminisced about being a cub scout in New Jersey in sixth grade when his pack held a mock presidential campaign between Carter and, oddly, prizefighter George Foreman.

He remembered Carter in the White House offering a dose of post-Watergate optimism and freshness, with his peanut farming roots and blue jeans. That was, he and others recalled, before the Iranian hostage rescue failed and the economy soured.

Vivian Moore brought her own card for Carter and made one for his wife, adding in the phrase “Sunshine on you.” Moore, who lives in DeKalb County, said she was a cluster coordinator for Carter’s Atlanta Project in the 1990s.

“He came to our community when nobody else would and tried to make a difference,” she said. There were efforts to teach parenting skills and fix up dilapidated homes.

The Rasmussens from Salt Lake City toured the presidential library and were impressed by Carter’s impact. But they didn’t sign the book or make a card.