One Georgia night in 1969, Jimmy Carter looked up over the pine trees and saw a moving orb, as bright as the moon.
He was standing outside the local Lions’ Club in Leary, where he was planning to address the meeting. But local politicking quickly vanished from his mind. The orb ‘seemed to move toward us from a distance, stop, move partially away, return, then depart,’ he said later, describing it as ‘bluish at first, then reddish, luminous, not solid.’ He called it ‘the darndest thing I’ve ever seen.’
Carter’s encounter with a UFO may pop up as a line in some of his obituaries, sandwiched between the sober analysis of his presidency and notable humanitarian work since. And like all politicians, he should be judged for his successes and failures, in office and out. But more than just an amusing footnote, this story gives us important insight into who he was as a man.
