Jimmy Carter’s early life provides many lessons about him, about America, and about who we are. History has a way of doing that. Jimmy’s early career touches on many parts of our national identity and shows how far we have come. He was the first in his family to graduate from high school! A Naval Academy graduate, Carter served under Admiral Rickover as a nuclear engineer in the early days of the atomic age. In 1952, he helped disarm a nuclear reactor in Canada that had malfunctioned, preventing a nuclear melt-down before anyone really understood what that was. He returned home to help his family when his dad died prematurely, resuming farming duties learned in his childhood. Slowly, he climbed the political ladder in Georgia, along the way encountering a corrupt local county supervisor who ran the local post office and doled out Social Security checks as patronage. If residents displeased him, he would steal their checks. Jimmy helped the community understand they had the power to challenge this bully, and eventually the man lost his power.