Jimmy Carter, formally known as James Earl Carter, Jr., was born on October 1, 1924, and was the oldest of four children. He was born in a small farming town of Plains, Georgia, and grew up in the nearby community of Archery. Jimmy's father, James Earl Carter, Sr., was a peanut farmer and a storekeeper, while Lillian Gordy's mother was a registered nurse. Jimmy Carter worked on the farm but as a boy dreamed of attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, because his uncle in the United States Navy had sent him postcards of exotic ports. He was the first member of his family ever to go to college. He started at Georgia Southwestern College in 1941 but only attended for a year. He followed that up with a year at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He moved on to receive a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. Later, he went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, graduating in 1946, ranked 60th in a class of 820.
             On July 7, 1946, Carter married Rosalynn Smith, his high school sweetheart, also from Plains. When Jimmy's father died in 1953, he resigned his naval commission and returned to Plains. Rosalynn became a big part of his life, from the peanut farming business to politics. He worked on his farm, and his wife operated the Warehouse, a general-purpose seed and farm supply company. They had three sons, John William, James Earl Carter III, Donnel Jeffery, and a daughter, Amy Lynn.
             Carter became involved in the community's affairs, serving as chairman of the county school board and the 1st president of the Georgia Planning Association. He won the election to the Georgia State in 1962. He lost his first gubernatorial campaign in 1966 but then won the next election, which made him Georgia's 76th governor on January 12, 1971. For the 1974 congressional elections, he was the Democratic National Committee, campaign chairman.
             As early as 1972, Carter decided halfway through his four-year...