I met Jimmy Carter in 2014. He had come to Fort Worth to work on a Habitat for Humanity build. He worked on several houses in the same neighborhood, and when I say, “worked,” I mean, “He was actually working.”

He and his wife spent all day there and then went to Dallas to work on houses there. He wasn’t just there for a photo op. The folks from Habitat even split up media interviews at different times so he’d have a reason to take a break.

I had forgotten this until I went back and listened to the interview. He came in October, but Texas had brought in record heat for him.

He said Habitat works closely with cities where he travels for builds. The events in Dallas and Fort Worth had about five thousand volunteers, so they needed rooms to stay, access to first aid and restaurants that can bring meals to the site.

Shortly after Jimmy Carter went into hospice, I caught up with the family who received that house. Trinity Habitat sent me a picture of Jacqueline Wills with Jimmy Carter after they finished her family’s home.

We talked about the heat. Wills said the Carters kept working and were approachable, but she had trouble getting used to the sight of a former president hammering away on her house.

Gage Yager, the head of Trinity Habitat, says Carter was active the entire day even getting the crowd riled up to start.

Yager says Carter’s build could bring attention to Habitat’s mission. I’ve covered build after build after build by Habitat since coming to DFW, and a consistent message they send is, “We give a hand up, not a hand out.”

The people receiving homes pay a mortgage and property tax. Yager says Habitat projects often turn vacant lots or abandoned homes into properties that produce tax for cities and counties.

During that build in 2014, Carter told me Habitat had built about 800,000 homes. He also said when he started, he wouldn’t have expected he’d still be hammering away even then.

Yager and Wills share the same message: Carter will want people to keep donating their money and time to help Habitat, and the rest of us should be so lucky to still be building doggone houses when we’re in our 90s.