“In October of 1924, in the tiny town of Plains, Georgia, population barely six hundred, a woman named Allie Smith gave birth to a daughter she named Eleanor Rosalynn, and on the same day in the same town, a family named Carter was already raising a boy named James Earl Jr. who was just shy of his first birthday….

“In October of 1924, in the tiny town of Plains, Georgia, population barely six hundred, a woman named Allie Smith gave birth to a daughter she named Eleanor Rosalynn, and on the same day in the same town, a family named Carter was already raising a boy named James Earl Jr. who was just shy of his first birthday. The two children grew up blocks apart, attended the same schools, knew the same neighbors, shared the same small-town rhythms, and somehow never became more than acquaintances until Jimmy Carter came home from the United States Naval Academy in the summer of 1945 and his younger sister Ruth set the two of them up on a date. Rosalynn had already noticed him. She had a photograph of him on her bedroom wall, which she had clipped from a picture that included her best friend, Jimmy’s sister Ruth. On their first date they drove to a movie in nearby Americus and by the time Jimmy got home that evening he told his mother he was going to marry Rosalynn Smith.