Jimmy Carter Was a Man of the People, Even at 35,000 Feet

By Kelly Yamanouchi
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Jimmy Carter nice person

(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Whenever Jimmy Carter took a flight somewhere, hundreds of people at a time got a chance to see the type of person he was.

Far from an aloof celebrity, the former president flew commercial and was known for walking genially down the aisle of the airplane, shaking each passenger’s hand and smiling.

A video of the former president doing his normal walk through the aircraft went viral in 2017. James Parker Sheffield, a passenger on the flight, posted the video on Twitter, the site now known as X, and wrote: “Jimmy Carter is on my plane to DC from ATL and just shook every hand of every passenger. ”

“It’s hard to put into words what a nice reprieve from the current political theater this moment was,” Sheffield told Channel 2 Action News in 2017.

Jill Vejnoska, a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the time who covered Jimmy Carter closely, reported back then:

In fact, what Carter did last week was nothing new. He’s long made a habit of shaking his fellow passenger’s hands when he boards a flight — even greeting an AJC reporter and his bride thusly nearly two decades ago as they were taking off on their honeymoon. It’s a sincerely heartfelt gesture on his part that also relieves the crew and security of having to deal with a barrage of in-flight requests from passengers wanting to meet the former president.