An early April morning at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. The buildings are beautifully situated in 35 acres of woods between downtown Atlanta and downtown Decatur.

The Carter, one of 11 presidential library-museums administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, contains more than 27 million pages; one million feet of film; 600,000 photographs; 2,500 hours of audiotape; and 1,200 hours of videotape.

Taking advantage of this outstanding resource on a recent research trip were Hauenstein Center director Gleaves Whitney and leadership fellows Brian Flanagan and Eian Gilbert.

First thing on the morning of April 4, 2005, James Yancy (right) briefed Eian and Brian on research procedures at the library. In the NARA system, such briefings are called "interviews."

Jimmy Carter has spent much of his life in the rural South, about two hours' drive south of Atlanta. He grew up not in Plains, as is widely believed, but in Archery, Georgia, on his parents' farm. This photograph was taken in 1926, when he was two.

Jimmy Carter described his father as a "stern disciplinarian." "My most vivid memory of a whipping," Carter wrote in his first autobiography, "was when I was four or five years old. I had been to my Sunday School class, and as was his custom Daddy had given me a penny for the offering. When we got back home, I took off my Sunday clothes and put the contents of my pocket on a dresser. There were two pennies lying there. Daddy thus discovered that when they passed the collection plate I had taken out an extra penny, instead of putting mine in for the offering. That was the last money I ever stole" [Carter, Why Not the Best?, p. 19].

The director of the Carter Library, Jay Hakes (second from left), led Gleaves, Eian, and Brian on a tour through the museum. Here they stand in a meticulous reproduction of the Oval Office as it appeared between 1977-1981. Because the 39th president is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, there are numerous nautical objects in the Oval Office. There is also a bust of Harry S. Truman. On the desk is the famous plaque associated with Truman, "The Buck Stops Here," given to President Carter by Margaret Truman.

Jimmy Carter's political career began at age 39 when he successfully ran for the Georgia Senate. The U.S. president at that time was another Democrat, John F. Kennedy.

This photograph of Carter was used in campaign posters and literature during that first successful campaign. Moving to Atlanta, he served in the Georgia legislature for two terms, from 1963-1966.

In the Carter library conducting research are Gleaves, Eian, and Brian. Some of the material they sought is still classified and thus not available for researchers.

Jimmy Carter lost his first bid for governor of Georgia in 1966. He was not well known and it was during this campaign that some journalists first dubbed him "Jimmy Who?" The phrase would be resurrected a decade later when Carter seemed to come out of nowhere to run for president.

The 1966 loss, Carter later wrote, "was extremely disappointing." He ended the campaign "deeply in debt." The race had also taken a physical toll. He had started the campaign weighing 152 pounds. On the campaign trail he lost 22 pounds, and was down to 130 by November [Jimmy Carter, Why Not the Best?, pp. 130-31].

Despite the emotional, financial, and physical toll of the '66 campaign, Carter would run for governor again in 1970. He vowed to win -- and did.

Jay Hakes (center) was a political science professor at the University of New Orleans when, in 1976, he headed up Carter's Louisiana campaign for the presidency.

About one year after being elected pope, John Paul II made an historic visit to the United States in 1979. He was the first pontiff to make the journey over the Atlantic. While in the U.S., John Paul II went to the White House and was hosted by the Carters. They shared a commitment to spreading human rights around the globe.

During his 26 years in the Vatican, Pope John Paul II would meet with five U.S. presidents. He met with Carter's successor Ronald Reagan a total of seven times.

President Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Jay Hakes jokes that if (1) you are a president and (2) your mother is from Georgia, then you are destined to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The mothers of all three U.S. presidents who won the prize -- Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter -- hailed from the Peach State.

A bust of President Jimmy Carter in the lobby of the museum.

Carter left the presidency on January 20, 1981, deeply disappointed that he had been defeated by Governor Ronald Reagan. His last visitor to the Oval Office was Max Cleland, who brought the outgoing president a plaque with a quotation from Thomas Jefferson:

I HAVE THE CONSOLATION TO REFLECT
THAT DURING THE PERIOD OF MY
ADMINISTRATION NOT A DROP
OF THE BLOOD OF A SINGLE CITIZEN
WAS SHED BY THE SWORD OF WAR.

On his last day in the White House, Carter wrote in his diary that Cleland's gift "is something I shall always cherish" [Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 596].