Former President Jimmy Carter, right, campaigns in Fallon on Sept. 27, 2006, for his son Jack, who was a candidate for the U.S. Senate.
LVN file
Editor’s note: Former President Jimmy Carter, who served from 1977-1981, visited Fallon in 2006 while campaigning for his son Jack, a candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Leading into the general election in November, the 39th president and Jack, who was running against incumbent John Ensign, crisscrossed the state. While in Fallon, President Carter spoke to a small gathering at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post on South Maine Street followed by a press conference and greet-and-meet at a local sports bar.
Fallon seemed like a perfect fit for two Navy veterans on this late September day. Former LVN reporter Viktoria Pearson Alby covered the Carters’ visit to Fallon and revisits their campaign stop and offers her thoughts.
In 2006, President Jimmy Carter accompanied his son Jack Carter on another campaign trail which led across the country to Fallon. Having been a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Carter spoke at a press conference at Post 1002 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Sept. 27, 2006. Naval Air Station Fallon was especially dear to his heart because of its naval operation and the rural farming community that surrounded it. It was no mistake the Carters chose to come to Fallon, he said.
I was the journalist covering this story for the Lahontan Valley News in 2006 and rereading my article brought many floods of emotions. It came back fresh in my mind. I remember they were greeted with loud whoops and hollers after the press conference when they entered the Sandwinds Restaurant to meet with locals.
Both Jack and Jimmy Carter were Navy veterans who love their country, love their fellow veterans and serving them meant a great deal to them. They spoke of this with great conviction, passion and compassion.
Veterans’ issues affect the country and are very important, said Jimmy Carter, adding the government is concealing the issues and not recognizing the debts to the veterans of this country for their sacrifices.
“It’s an unprecedented derogation of forgetting or concealment of the benefits and the debts we owe to veterans; that’s a very serious problem,” he said.
The former president said the country needs a change in policy and minds to unify Americans. Furthermore, he said protection of military personnel who put their lives on the line while serving the country needs to be a priority.
“We were unified during first and second World Wars, we were not unified in Vietnam or Korea, and we became unified again after Sept. 11,” said Jimmy Carter.
He talked about the bad decisions and actions causing a divide in the country, “almost as much as Vietnam.”
This makes me think of the state of the country now. How divided we are today. I believe Carter would work toward unification and find or seek solutions to unite us rather than divide us as a nation.
Carter spoke about the importance of veterans and what steps could be taken to improve veterans’ lives.
I have a special place in my heart for Jimmy Carter that spans from his presidential campaign in the mid 1970s when I was a small girl. My class was going to attend an event with the candidate, and our teacher asked us to draw him a picture.
I drew a picture of a Mr. Peanut from the peanut jar. I wrote President Jimmy Carter at the top and I love you and peanuts at the bottom. I was one of the children in the line during his greeting and he took my picture and tussled my hair and said this is so sweet I will hang it on my wall. I never forgot that moment. When I was able to interview Jack on his campaign trail, I told him about this.
He brought his dad, a man I was still a fan of after all these years over to speak with me. I asked if he remembered the drawing. Carter replied with a slight confused look, “yes I do and it is still hung on my wall.” I told him I was that little girl, about 7 years old then. He gave me a hug and said, “anytime I was down, it made me smile. Thank you for that.” I then told him I was a Republican with a sideways smile. He replied, “well nobody’s perfect.” We both laughed, and they were off for a fundraiser in Reno later that night.
President Carter's roots in Georgia go back to the 1760s. He came from humble beginnings, running around with his friends and working the fields right beside each other in bare feet, not even having shoes until he was school-aged.
He sold boiled peanuts from his father’s farm on the main street of his small little hometown with a population of just 600 people, making just a dollar a day but later achieving the highest office in the land.
He said in a 2015 interview with 20/20, the ABC news magazine program, what he wanted to do when he grew up? Since he was just 8 years old, he knew what he wanted.
“Like a parrot I would say, I want to go to Annapolis and be a naval officer,” Carter said with a huge grin during that 2015 news interview.
He was successful in this achievement, receiving a commission to lieutenant in 1946. He served in the Navy resigning his commission after only seven years following his father’s death in 1953. He felt compelled to return to Plains to run his father’s peanut business.
Carter’s niece, Kim Carter Fuller said, “he was on track to being something really big; but when my granddaddy passed away, he came home.”
Carter became interested in politics becoming a member of the Democratic Party and seeking a political career in the 1960s. Carter was elected and served as Georgia state senator from 1963 to 1967, and then he ran for governor and served as the 76th governor from 1971 to 1975 before defeating Gerald Ford for the presidency in 1976.
Andrew Young, UN Ambassador in the Carter administration, said the two were meeting at a local restaurant to connect with the locals.
“He then did something I would never have thought about doing,” Young said.
Carter went in the back kitchen and talked to and shook the hands of everyone.
“He reminded me without saying a word. That every vote is important,” Young remembered.
Carter was an advocate for African Americans throughout his career. In his gubernatorial inaugural address provided by ABC News archives, he said, “I say to you quite frankly, the time for racial discrimination is over.”
Although his father approved segregation, he adored his mother, Bessie Lillian Carter, who was against it. Carter followed his mother’s guidance believing women were equal to men and blacks and whites were equal. Carter is remembered for his advocacy throughout his career and his life to end discrimination.
Carter was the first to mount an African American’s portrait within the walls of the Georgia Capitol.
According to an archived New York Times article, Jan. 5, 1974, Carter noted no portrait in the Capitol had a black person honored. He then appointed a biracial commission of four black and four white Georgians to recommend three Georgia African Americans to be honored in the portrait gallery.
Martin Luther Kings was the first portrait hung in the Capitol just after Carter became governor. The commission also selected Henry McNeal Turner, who served in the state legislature in the 1880s, and Lucy Laney, who organized schools during the 1880s, according to the New York Times article.
Carter was also a hopeless romantic who adored his wife, Eleanor Rosalynn Carter. She died in 2023 at age 96. Rosalynn was three grades below Carter in school. Although they met when Carter was just three years old, the two did not start dating until 1945. They married July 7, 1946, after he graduated Annapolis. The two celebrated their 77th anniversary in July 2023, and she died in November.
In a 20/20 interview with the couple in 1978, commentator and host Barbara Walters asked what they argued about. Carter replied with an impish smile at his wife, “We argue about politics, we argue about government, we argue about family ….”
Many years later in another interview, he said they never went to bed angry.
Some of Carter's greatest triumphs, includes brokering peace between Egypt and Israel; winning the Nobel Peace Prize; through the Carter Center, spearheading the near eradication of Guinea worm disease from Africa.
Viktoria Alby is a freelance writer and may be contacted at Viktoria@tlccreativeconcepts.com.