Rosalynn Carter in Southern Oregon

"Peter, I had such a nice talk with Mrs. Carter. What a kind, thoughtful woman."
           My mother, Anne Sage, to me, October, 1980

Strange what things one remembers and what one forgets. 

I forget Rosalynn Carter's speech. I remember my mother's comment.

My mother was relating an incident at the food table set up for a Democratic campaign event. The place was at the Britt Pavilion in Jacksonville, Oregon, an historic Gold Rush town just outside of Medford.

I remember the season, temperature, and time of day -- dinnertime on a crisp day in mid-October of an election year. I don't remember the Secret Service or metal detectors or any of the trappings of a First Lady mingling casually with the public. Yet it must have been October, 1980, because there is a third-party written record of photographs taken by Medford Mail Tribune journalists. Gerald Ford had a breakfast rally at the beginning of the month and George Bush (surely George HW Bush) came here with Senator Bob Packwood. There are two records of Rosalynn Carter getting photographed in the third week of October in Jacksonville. 

Oregon was a swing state back in 1980, so it makes sense that national politicians would come here at the height of election season. Portland was pulling the state in a blue direction, but in 1980 we still had two Republican senators, Bob Packwood and Mark Hatfield. Medford punches above its weight for getting candidates to show up, because it is a TV media market for a half million downstate people not covered by the Portland and Eugene stations. 

I was the Master of Ceremonies. I was a Democratic candidate for County Commissioner and my day-job occupation was melon grower. There was a late frost that year and I was still picking and selling melons deep into October, so it was a doubly-busy time, picking and delivering marginal end-of-season melons in the early morning, then knocking on doors and standing in front of post offices and grocery stores all afternoons. This evening event made it a long day.

Rosalynn Carter was the headliner. The event gave Democratic candidates for state and county offices a speaking slot and a chance to make the TV news. In mid-October there was no particular inkling that this would be a bad year for Jimmy Carter. Polls then showed Carter and Reagan about even. The vibe on doorsteps was quite positive until in the last seven days before the election, when something suddenly changed. The bottom dropped out for Carter and for Democrats generally. Voters watched the Reagan/Carter debate and decided that Reagan wasn't too old or too extreme after all. Somehow I survived the wipeout. 

I am sure the First Lady was earnest and gracious in her speech, because that is who she was, always. I forget what I said to introduce her, and I don't remember a single word of her talk. I remember she was normal-looking. If she used makeup to sharpen her look for TV, as people do, I don't recall and I think not. She looked to me like the middle-class women I would see on Sunday mornings at my parents' church, small-town normal.

The encounter between my mother and Rosalynn Carter was at the buffet table with finger-foods for the candidates, brought by volunteers. I brought a big tray of cantaloupe slices, but they needed to be eaten on the spot because they are wet and messy. One item was dry and easily pack-able, a solid-looking pumpkin pie, cut into thin slices. My mother saw Mrs. Carter fussing with the slices. She was folding and wapping them into paper napkins and putting them into her purse. Mother held her purse open wide as the First Lady carefully arranged the slices so they wouldn't smush.

Mrs. Carter explained that she had an assistant who was assigned to stay back at the airplane and that the assistant wouldn't get to eat until after midnight, and that she wanted to bring something back to her because she wouldn't have eaten since noon. 

"She was so thoughtful, so considerate," mother said, "with everything else that must have been on her mind, she was thinking of the young assistant. What a nice woman."

It is a tiny thing to remember about the evening I shared a stage with Rosalynn Carter, but that is what sticks, 43 years later. The food buffet. Mrs. Carter taking pumpkin pie back to an assistant. And my mother noticing a thoughtful and considerate act, and liking Mrs. Carter for it. As do I. It is a good memory.

Mother was 64 years old in 1980. Rosalynn Carter was 53 then. Rosalynn Carter died yesterday at age 96. 

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