Former president Jimmy Carter has died at age 100 after spending months in hospice care. He was a one term President who failed at reelection and, by all accounts, a strange fellow with a toothy grin that felt a bit "off."
I shouldn't wonder if he was somewhere "on the spectrum" as we now designate socially awkward people. He is remembered for the failed attempt to rescue the hostages taken when Iranian fanatics overran the U.S. embassy in Tehran and, peculiarly enough, for deregulating airline fares.
My own personal memory of "Jimmah" as his fellow southerners called him, centers on an event on the White House lawn. I saw him at a distance and was surprised at how unimpressive and diffident he appeared at this symbolic ceremony welcoming a foreign head of state.
In those halcyon days when a President needed a supportive crowd as a backdrop while greeting a foreign visitor, several hundred federal workers were allowed to leave their desks and go be his cheering section. As I remember it, we went to White House or maybe were bused there, showed our federal employee ID card, and were admitted to a taped-off section of the lawn.
We stood there while a color guard did their thing, a band played the national anthems of both leaders' nations and POTUS made a brief speech of welcome which we applauded. Then the visitor spoke thanking him for the hospitality which we also applauded, and they adjourned inside. We were then allowed to trickle back to our desks, taking our time and maybe stopping for lunch.
It amounted to a half day off with pay in return for standing around and applauding a couple of times. As a temp I relished the experience. Some of the old-timers had done it repeatedly and didn't care to do it again, I understand the novelty wears off quickly. This was in the mid-1970s and it may no longer be SOP.
