Remembering Jimmy!

It has been the greatest inspiration of my life to have known Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter personally.

He is a man for all ages. I say “is” because I know he is at this moment in the arms of his beloved Rosalyn in Heaven.

” You remember him as an image on TV or a photo. I remember him as a grinning man in a red Winston Cup racing jacket, walking into the living room of the Governor’s Mansion’s garage apartment carrying a tall stack of Rock ‘n Roll record albums . . . then bashfully explaining, “Rosalynn just threw me out of the mansion, because she didn’t want the ladies, she’s entertaining . . . being upset by my Rock Music.”

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter . . . back when I knew them

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

The Three Most Poignant Memories of Jimmy

When we were sitting around the campfire at Unicoi Lodge

When I saw him on a premier of a TV series in Sweden!

When a 30-year old Joe Biden was standing six feet from me . . . inviting Jimmy to run for President of the United States

Cumberland Island, GA National Seashore

(1) Jimmy, the inspiration for young folks

A few weeks after being sworn in as Governor, Jimmy selected me as one of his first college interns. I was neither the son of a major donor or a Rhodes Scholar, so it must have been the kidnapping of Lester Maddox, the arch-segregationist governor of Georgia, who preceded Jimmy. Yep, that’s right. Not many folks can claimed to have kidnapped a governor and gotten away with it.

Two and a half months after I returned to Atlanta after the fellowship in Mexico, I led a squad of Georgia Tech Lambda Chi Alpha brothers into the State Capitol and right into Gov. Maddox’s office. We whisked him away in the Rambling Wreck. We threatened to return him to the State Capitol unless state employees filled two rooms with non-perishable foods for the needy. We had to return Maddox, but I made the front page of the AJC.

My assignment was the Soil and Water Conservation Division, which was handling the purchase of Cumberland Island then donation to the National Park Service. There were several meetings with Jimmy involved, but I was essentially a go-fer.

The Unicoi Lodge at Unicoi State Park

At the end of the summer, Jimmy invited his college interns to a weekend retreat at Unicoi State Park. We were to dream up what Georgia would be like in the year 2000 . . . 29 years in the future. Then, we were to formulate the goals for Georgia’s government in order to be prepared for that year. We got everything wrong!

Perhaps the official purpose of the retreat was a waste of time. However, being around Jimmy, who was always dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, changed my life. Especially, when he was sitting beside me on a log, next to a campfire, there was something about that man that made want to do more than my life than appear successful and make lots of money. Jimmy wanted to make the world a better place. That idealism rubbed off on me somehow.

Life is stranger than fiction!

(2) Jimmy the star of a Swedish TV program

The morning after I graduated from Georgia Tech in 1972, I embarked on a 24-hour journey to Landskrona, Sweden to work for the City Architect’s Office. On Wednesday, June 7, my boss Gunnar Lydh, took me by boat to see the project site on Ven Island. When we returned for lunch, one of the city councilmen was waiting for me.

He invited me to have dinner with his family the following evening. They had just purchased a big Husqvarna color TV. A new prime time series, called “Life in the USA” was premiering in living color. Most of the TV programs in Europe in 1972 were in black and white.

Wel-l-l . . . the premier of the series featured the State of Georgia. That was unbelievable. It was a different world back then. Lund University law student, Britt-Louise Manson knew where Savannah was, but had never heard of Georgia and thought Atlanta was a small city that was permanently destroyed in the Civil War . . . thus inspiring the movie, “Gone With the Wind.” Agnetha Fältskog, the future blonde A in ABBA had never heard of Atlanta, Savannah or Georgia. *

* “Gone With the Wind” was so popular in Sweden and Denmark that the two ferries connecting Landskrona with Copenhagen, Denmark were named after Scarlet O’Hara. Agnetha told me across a restaurant table in Malmo, Sweden that she dreamed of moving to the United States and singing on Broadway. She assumed that Atlanta was near New York City. Exactly 50 years later, she posted a private video on YouTube . . . filmed on the farm, where she grew up . . . She confessed that in the summer of 1972, she was just a country girl, who had dropped out of school at age 16, five years earlier, because of her love of music. Ironically, ABBA’s last public performance was in Landskrona. Their last publicly performed song was “Dancing Queen”.

The TV program framed Georgia, Atlanta, Carrollton and Savannah in a very positive image . . . but the big star, whose interview covered about a fourth of the one hour program was Jimmy Carter. At the end of the program, the commentator for Sverige TV1 closed by saying that he thought Jimmy would be president of the United States some day. Say what?

(3) Becoming a president

As soon as I got back from Europe, I called the governor’s office to tell them that Jimmy had been the star of a prime time TV premier in Sweden. His staff was shocked. Jimmy was shocked. He thought his interview would be condensed into a one minute blip on the evening news in Stockholm. He told me that although Georgia exported a lot of chickens, canned peaches and kaolin clay to Sweden, he didn’t know much about Sweden.

President Nixon had withdrawn diplomatic relations with Sweden several months before I went over there . . . claiming it was a Marxist cesspool. It was not. The only government-owned business in Landskrona was the liquor store.

Jimmy wanted me to drop by the governor’s mansion for dinner to talk about Sweden. However, that same week I was hired by a prestigious A-E-P firm in Metro Washington, DC. It would be two months or more, before I would be back in Atlanta.

In late February 1973, Chip and Caron Carter invited Caron’s former room-mate at Wesleyan College and I to a Saturday afternoon soiree in the Governor’s Mansion garage apartment. Jimmy soon showed up with the rock records, so we began mixed discussions of rock music and life in Sweden.

About an hour later a man knocked at the door then opened it. He said, “Jimmy, the plane arrived early. Miss Rosalynn said it was alright for me and my nephew to come on over here. Is it okay?” Jimmy waved them inside.

We were a little irritated that a stranger was budging into our private party, but then Jimmy introduced his guests. “Folks, this is Joe Biden from Delaware. The youngest ever United States Senator.” We all then stood at attention. While Joe was in the bathroom, Jimmy warned us not to mention Joe’s family. His wife and baby had been killed in an auto accident six weeks earlier.

Joe and Jimmy continued to ask me questions about Sweden and the terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics. Jimmy seemed to know that I had been dispatched to the Olympics during the night after the initial attack.

Then Joe Biden started getting more and more antsy. He was stuttering more too. Finally, he asked if he and Jimmy could speak in private. Jimmy, said that it was not necessary, these young men and women were future leaders of our nation.

Joe then stood more erect and announced, “Jimmy, I am here on behalf of the Democratic Committee to invite you to run for national office.”

Gasp!