In the fall of 1976 the Democratic candidate for president, Jimmy Carter, came to Peekskill on a campaign stop. He and vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale had secured the nomination at Madison Square Garden earlier that summer.
I was a sophomore living at Marist College in Poughkeepsie. During my weekly call with my parents, Vinnie and Rosemary Clarkin, they mentioned Jimmy Carter would be coming to Peekskill. My mom was volunteering for his campaign by ‘petitioning’ (collecting signatures from registered Democrats for Carter to appear on the ballot). Did I want to take the train to Peekskill for the weeknight event, they asked? “I certainly did,” I replied.
On that autumn evening three friends and I boarded the New York Central railroad (as Metro North wasn’t in existence then) to Peekskill. We joined my parents for dinner at their Howard Street home where we had a lively discussion about the presidential contest between Carter and Gerald Ford. After dinner we went to see the former governor from Georgia at the Masonic Temple, the building we know today as the Paramount East.
I don’t remember much of what he said, it was one of his many stops in New York as he sought to secure the necessary number of electoral college votes to carry the state. My friends and I returned to the Poughkeepsie campus that evening and I tried to keep up with the race, especially because my minor was political science. I was particularly motivated as I had turned 18 in November the year before and the 1976 election would be the first time I could enter the curtained voting booth and pull the lever.
I was thrilled when he won the election and became our nation’s 39th president in 1977. It was the summer of 1989 when I encountered Jimmy Carter again.
I was in my third year of publishing the print edition of the Peekskill Herald and needed a break away from deadline pressures. My friend Carol Pezzelli, who worked in development for Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit Carter was associated with, invited me to Americus, Georgia for a long weekend.
The trip gave me a welcome change of scenery from my responsibilities in Peekskill. I was happy to go, although travelling south in the hot, humid summer turned out to be less than pleasurable weather wise.
Carol and I were career women in our 20’s, so we relaxed and shared stories about our lives over meals. Because it was beastly hot and she didn’t have air conditioning in her second floor apartment of a private home, we swam in the municipal pool.
We decided to attend the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, about ten miles from Americus, where former President Jimmy Carter would frequently teach Sunday School. Carol had met the Carters numerous times through her work with Habitat and said she’d be happy to introduce me to them if they were there that Sunday.
Enroute to the church I asked her if she ever saw the couple around town and she said, ‘Yup, look out the window, there’s Rosalynn talking to tourists over the fence by their house.”
To my great delight, they were in attendance at the church that Sunday and he was sharing his reflections on the Old Testament book of Judges. It was fascinating to hear a former president of the United States expounding on the Hebrew scriptures which described the descent of the Israelites into moral corruption. Before Israel had kings, they had judges who were leaders of the people. He had a unique vantage point from which to discuss leadership.
After the Sunday school session ended, Carol took a picture of me with the couple and I asked them to autograph a copy of the book, “The President Builds A House” for my 8-year-old goddaughter, Dathalinn O’Dea. They happily obliged and we chatted a bit about the work I was doing publishing a weekly newspaper in Peekskill, New York. I’m sure I reminded him that he visited Peekskill on a campaign stop some 13 years prior.
The book is a prized possession of Dathalinn O’Dea who is now the mother of four children.
I was sad when I learned that his life ended, but I was also grateful for the opportunity to be in the presence of a person who was principled, humble and a true servant leader.
