“I missed you at Sunday school today,” Mr. Jimmy said to me as he entered the back door of what once was a boarding house where his parents lived when they were first married. He always stopped to speak with me in the kitchen before mingling with the nearly 45 people gathered in anticipation of sharing a Sunday brunch with him. They lined the walls in the hallway, the parlor, the dining room. 

The home folks gathered in the kitchen at the table and the barstools at the counter. Most of them had not made it to church either. They generally came to keep me company while I cooked and to eat the first biscuits as they came out of the oven.

I looked up from the opened oven where eight quiches were baking. I closed the oven and stood. He smiled that wily, half smile that showed his famous teeth, he knew this was a sore spot between us. 

“Who do you think would’ve cooked for all these people if I had gone to Sunday school?” I retorted as I always did. He hugged me and waded into the sea of starstruck folks from all over the world, giving thanks for this once in a lifetime opportunity. They weren’t there to eat my food. 

We’d had this discussion before. I told him I was more of a Martha than a Mary — Lazarus’s two sisters who had the famous argument over the fact that Martha was always toiling in the kitchen to feed the throngs that came to hear Jesus speak, while Mary sat at his feet absorbing the teachings. Jesus kind of did take Mary’s side — which I maintain to this day was profoundly unfair and Mr. Jimmy knew it, but he just couldn’t help needling me one more time.

As we approach the joyous occasion of President Jimmy Carter’s one hundredth birthday on Oct. 1, that one memory comes to mind. It does so because through him and Mrs. Rosalynn, my husband Wesley and I have made friends with people from all walks of life and from the four corners of the world. For Mr. Jimmy, it was all about sharing a moment, a prayer and a meal. 

As I’ve shared before, the joke in Plains was to ask me how many people were coming to dinner that night. I would always look over to my friend Jill Stuckey — who can’t and won’t even attempt to boil water — and if she looked away, I knew we were somewhere between seven and 70. 

The meals were as simple as spaghetti to full blown banquet buffets. But that wasn’t the point. It was the gathering, the fellowship, the stories, the laughter. 

Mr. Jimmy collected people as some folks collect stamps. And in his collecting, he drew you in and suddenly — just like that — you had your own collection of folks you would’ve never, but for him, met in a million years. 

He did this in his tenure as president as well. Camp David brought folks together the world thought would never have even spoken — much less sit in blue jeans on a porch and make peace. I wasn’t there, of course. 

There are a myriad of folks with Pulitzer Prizes and varied degrees and scholarly knowledge who have written more books than I can count about President Carter’s extraordinary life. I can’t do that. What I can do to celebrate this man I love so deeply is to tell you about an old Victorian home that clearly over the years needed more work than some of us could afford, that sheltered a dining room table with two chairs no one dared take. 

As I write this, I can see Mr. Jimmy and Mrs. Rosalynn sitting in those chairs, engaging world leaders, CEOs of international companies, and an 8-year-old little boy-named Carter, who was so starstruck because Mr. Jimmy is his hero, that he couldn’t speak. 

All those people who came through the buffet line just off the kitchen mostly became our friends. We traded recipes, we sent care boxes home, we visited them in their homes — even in different countries. We are a family of sorts, all brought together by a man named Jimmy Carter — ’Mr. Jimmy’ to me. 

The whole world continues to be a better place because he was a force of inclusiveness. He expected us to show love for each other — a hug, a handshake, in my case, a meal. He showed me that my ‘love language’ was food. He allowed me to share it with him. 

As he rounds the century mark, I’ll be in Plains, cooking. You just never know who is going to show up!

Atlanta resident Michele R. Dunn has been the “chief cook and bottle washer” for Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter for over 20 years.

RELATED STORY: Commentary: He is ‘Mr. Jimmy’ to me

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