Sumter County Sheriff Eric Bryant shared memories of former President Jimmy Carter, including providing security for the former President. However, long before his role of Sheriff, Bryant remembered seeing President Carter as a boy growing up outside the City of Plains. He recalled coming to town to go to the store or for special occasions and seeing cyclists. The sight made him curious. “Who [are] all these people on a bicycle? I didn’t know that it was a bicycle marathon today?” He told how an adult would tell him “‘Oh that’s President Carter and Miss Carter riding their bicycles through downtown Plains.’ And you see so many, because the secret service was riding their bicycles along with them, and those are experiences that I never forget.”

Bryant even remembers the shock he had at seeing the Carters’ bicycles. “My bicycle was more shinier than their bicycle!” He found it a reflection of their perspective. “That’s the realness in how the Carters interacted with the Plains community. They never were people that put themselves above anybody, they were just real, downhome South Georgia residents and that was just so unique to me.”

Years later, Bryant provided security for Carter. “The Sumter County Sheriff’s office, since I started in the mid 90s, have always played a very vital role in President Carter’s operations. Of course, his home is here, a lot of his major activities are here, even when he started his presidential bid, it started here in this community. So the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office has always been the law enforcement entity that provides the support that the entire Carter operation encompasses.”

Bryant talked about what made providing security for the Carter’s a unique experience, even aside from being a former President. “They always took time to not only thank the law enforcement community and those that [were] in support of anything they had in Plains, but they would always take a picture. And of course, I have a picture of every encounter, or event that we’ve hosted and President Carter, Miss Carter actually took the time to take pictures.”

One particular venue the Sheriff’s office was responsible for providing security was at Carter’s church, Maranatha Baptist, where he used to teach Sunday School lessons. The Sheriff’s department partnered with the Cater Center and Secret Service to provide traffic control, people control, and presence. “President Carter’s Sunday school classes got so large until we literally had a calendar of President Carter details for deputies, because people would start gathering at his church on Saturday evenings, Saturday afternoon.”

He talked about having an opportunity to sit in on one of the lessons after providing security for so many. “President Carter already knew the lesson. . . in his mind, so it wasn’t like someone was reading to me. But it was almost like he not only wrote it, but he lived it. So he was able to give you conversations and Sunday school lessons that [were] so real, and so interactive, and it kept your attention.”

Bryant described how each one would begin: “All of the Sunday School classes, it starts out with ‘Hey, where are you from,’ any experiences that you had traveling or coming to that session, and then of course, the thing that I could remember the most is President Carter at that time when he was actually full-fledged teaching Sunday school lesson, his personal interaction with people.”

Bryant talked about how he had always wondered why so many people traveled such distances to hear a Sunday school lesson when they could hear it virtually or attend others nearby. “There are other many, many, many other, Sunday school teachers, but the powerfulness of his message, and how he was able to interact it with life experiences, and sometimes even directly to your life experience, it was amazing. And now I understood or better understood why people travel from all over the world to get that experience of listening at his Sunday school message. Again, I might have had to step out or I might have been summoned to a vehicle improperly parked or a citizen that had a burning question that wanted to hear it directly from the Sheriff, you know, ‘Can I park here?’, ‘No, you can’t park here. But I tell you what I’ll do just for you, I’ll let you park there.’”

While Bryant provided security for Carter on many occasions, he recalled one instance where Carter attended an event he participated in. “One of the opportunities that I also learned and gained over the years of working in public sector was public speaking. And first year as that time, chief deputy, I had an opportunity to be the guest speaker at the Black History program in Plains in February of 2005, and that was one of my first major public speaking events, and President and Miss Carter was in attendance. So that picture is on the wall there as well. So a lot of experiences, a lot of interactions, and I think it’s just something that will go down in history that I will never forget.”

For more stories about Jimmy Carter please go to www.americustimesrecorder.com/category/jimmy-carter/