This is an opinion column

The audience grew quiet and attentive when Miss Lillian entered the room and started talking about her life. And what a remarkable life it was.

Miss Lillian was the mother of former president Jimmy Carter, and she made an appearance last Thursday at the North Huntsville Public Library. Actor Elaine Hubbard embodied the 80-year-old iconic woman in her one-hour monologue of “Miss Lillian,” written and directed by Carol Cook Puckett and sponsored by Learning Quest, a lifelong learning program.

The room was packed with people who wanted to learn more about the feisty woman who was a nurse in segregated Plains, Georgia in the 1950s and insisted on making house calls to black families as well as white ones. She welcomed blacks to her home, too, something unheard of in her time. She brought up her four children with the notion that segregation was wrong and serving other people, no matter what their color, was right.

After his mother was widowed, Jimmy Carter came home from his naval career to help her run the family peanut farm and business. With her own family grown and gone, she wanted to be of use to others.

When she interviewed to be a housemother in a fraternity house in Auburn, she asked to be placed where the wildest boys were since she thought they might need guidance and love and direction. It turns out, they did.

Then she insisted on joining the Peace Corps at age 68 because she knew she could be useful in India where they sent her. Her specialties were birth control planning and general nursing. After her time living among the poor, she learned that material goods weren’t very important and rich countries like ours don’t need as much food as we eat. Her appetite was small after that.

She urged people that they could do and should do something about the problems of their time.

“I’m just an elderly woman from the middle of the country,” she said, “and if I can do something, so can you.”

Though she was never in politics, she was often in the spotlight, acting as ambassador for her son. In Hubbard’s monologue, the audience learned Miss Lillian’s tricks for dealing with the press. If they come to your home, offer them lemonade in small glasses and peanuts in a small bowl. That way, when the lemonade is gone, the reporter would know he should go, too.

Playwright Puckett was drawn to the character because she believes that behind every outstanding child is an outstanding mother. Jimmy Carter was the first president she voted for and she’s always admired the way he lives his life. She produced the play just once before at the Chautauqua Association in Florida where it was well received.

And how did Hubbard bring this character to life? Her own mother was a nurse, so she understood that particular profession. She spent her early years in south Georgia, so she knew about flat land and piney woods. But she didn’t just rely on memory. She looked at photos of Miss Lillian’s small house and then drew a map of the area, including the pond and the dirt road that led to the place.

She had to learn enough about the character to present her with integrity and honesty. She had to let the audience know that Miss Lillian was more than the charming and joke-cracking guest on the Johnny Carson show, where she confessed to the host that she had a highball every night at 5:00, Plains, Georgia time, even when she was on an airplane.

She could have been just the president’s mother, but she was not. As she often told reporters, “I have three other children, too.”

If you missed her this time, Mill Lillian will be back. Puckett says the play will be presented at UAH on October 6 at 11:00 a.m. through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. It’s offered as a free public program. For more information, contact Carol Puckett at [email protected].

You can contact Beth Thames at [email protected]