I was going to do my December blog post a few weeks ago but then decided I wanted to wait until the interlude between Christmas and New Years because this past weekend we were doing a quick two day trip and I suspected it would have an impact on my thoughts.  It did.

Growing up in the North and being a student of history, I remember learning about the horrors of Andersonville Prison in Georgia during the Civil War.

(For those unfamiliar with it, it was a Confederate prison camp that operated for only 14 months between 1864 and 1865, but the conditions were so appalling and the treatment so bad that of the 45,000 Union & civilian prisoners sent there, 13,000+ died and the rest were very malnourished, diseased, and near death when liberated at the end of the war.  It was a precursor to the conditions in Nazi concentration camps 75 years later during World War 2, and the trial of its commander, Captain Henry Wirz was a precursor to the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials after World War 2). 

Having lived and worked in the Deep South now for 25+ years, there have been many times when I was driving up and down I-75 and would see the exit signs for Andersonville National Historic Site but there was always some reason why I never made the effort to go and check it out.  Usually it was because I had someplace else to be and Andersonville was too out of the way.  

As an ex-Republican I grew up in New York with a less than favorable view of former President Carter.  As a one term president during 4 years of tumultuous world events with mixed results at best, I would say my view of him when I was a teen and young man was more a well meaning but hapless punch line or a joke than someone to seriously look up to.  

(Perhaps that is why young people are not the best choice for running the world.)

Increasingly over the decades my respect for the man grew monumentally, for what he tried to accomplish while in office, what he achieved after leaving office, and how he lived his life.  

In the last few years as President Carter approached 100 years old, and as my family visited more and more presidential libraries around the country in our travels, I kind of felt ashamed that here the one that was closest to me geographically…President Carter’s…I hadn’t made any attempt to go and visit.  

A year ago today after he passed, I resolved that we needed to make the effort to go see both Andersonville and his presidential library.  

We did the presidential library back over the summer when we were in Atlanta, and just this past weekend went to go see his grave & historical site in Plains Georgia as well as Andersonville Historic Site since they are both about 30 minutes apart.  

Which brings me to the main thrust of this month’s blog post.  

After we left Andersonville and the sobering and heart wrenching history of the place and headed towards Plains, I was thinking of the dualities of history.  

How is it that arguably the most authentically Christian president we’ve ever had was created and molded during the height of Jim Crow in one of the most at that time racist areas of the country, and less than 30 miles from a scene of unspeakable human suffering that occurred less than 60 years before he was born?   

The odds would have been very good on a young white male being born in the Deep South in 1924 turning out to be just as racist and full of hate as the rest of society in that area of the country at that time.  

But he didn’t turn out that way.  Why?

These are my observations–

His father was a World War One veteran who had seen the horrors of humanity firsthand and had no wish to see them continue in his children’s lives.  

His mother was a kind and open minded person who loved unconditionally and didn’t care about the color of a person’s skin but the content of their heart.  

His playmates and family friends included local black kids and adults.  

His public school teachers instilled a lifelong love of learning, encouraging him to be a voracious reader and to not just dream about a life beyond sleepy Plains Georgia, but to have the confidence and tenacity to go out into the world and make that life happen.

When we were at the National Prisoner of War Museum at Andersonville, there was a 30 minute video narrated by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Colin Powell, made probably 25 years ago. 

In the video the common theme of all the former POW’s from various wars, including readings of accounts from Andersonville survivors, is that as long as a person kept even the smallest spark of hope and positivity alive inside them, they had a chance to survive, but the second they gave up hope, it was a guarantee that they wouldn’t make it.  

The other major point from the video was that whether a person is a prisoner of war or detained for any other reason, they deserve to be treated with dignity and care. 

It is a lesson that our current administration seems to have chosen to forget or ignore when it comes to detaining illegal immigrants and their families.  

The overriding takeaway for me from Andersonville & Plains, is the incredible juxtaposition of less than 20 miles between despair and hope, cruelty and kindness, destruction and creation, fear and faith.

Sadly, from all the school shootings and terrorism events over my lifetime, I came to the conclusion long ago that anything could happen anywhere, at any time, to anyone.  

What this weekend reminded me of however, is that the opposite is also true.  A good deed can be done by a good person at any time, in any place, by any person.

The new year that will be arriving in a few short days will have plenty of down moments and dark times that will happen all on their own, whether we want them to or not.  

It is up to each one of us to supply the good times and the happy moments every chance we get, for whoever we can, whenever we can, with whatever we have.  

For it is not the dark times that define us, it is how we respond to them.