SALEM, Ore. – Landing at the Portland Air National Guard Base on May 22, 1980, just four days after the massive eruption of Mount St. Helens in Southwest Washington, President Jimmy Carter arrived to personally survey the destruction of one of the greatest volcanic events ever recorded in North America. When the weather cleared the following day, President Carter, along with other federal and state officials, boarded a Marine helicopter and conducted a lengthy aerial examination over the Skamania County blast area; while also touring other impacted areas along the Columbia and Cowlitz Rivers.

“It is a horrible looking site. I don’t know if there is anything like it in the world,” he said, speaking briefly with a group of reporters after landing later at the Kelso-Longview Airport, Washington. “There’s nothing left but massive piles of mud and what used to be mountains…“There’s no way, I mean, to describe it. It’s an unbelievable sight.”

As for many around the nation, I included (having graduated High School the day before the eruption), who watched the images on television throughout that week – we’re left stunned by the ‘moon-like landscape’ of grayish ash, flattened trees, and swollen rivers.

Now, as the nation pauses to pay tribute to the life of the 39th President of the United States with his passing on December 29, 2024 at the age 100, as his legacy of civic, military, and humanitarian service; which resonated to communities and nations throughout the world, touched our own region over 44 years ago. He was the nation’s oldest living President.

‘There is nothing like this in the world’

In the weeks leading up to the eruption at 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, the nation’s attention had already been focused on the seismic activities of the mountain. By this time, the Oregon Army National Guard’s 1042nd Military Intelligence (M.I.) Company (later reorganized as the 641st M.I. Battalion), were already flying, photographing and mapping reconnaissance missions, utilizing their OV-1 Mohawk aircraft as the bulging mountain with more frequent earthquakes had been intensifying since mid-March.

On the morning of the eruption, Mohawks were already in the air over S.W. Washington, as it was also a drill weekend for the unit. Ironically members of the Washington Army National Guard were conducting their own annual training, as aviation crews in Yakima could bear witness to the devastating flank collapse, avalanche, and explosion – were quick to respond, conducting search and rescue operations around the blast zone. National Guard members would be activated to help support the area’s recovery and clean-up operations for several months to follow. President Carter would later call these actions, “perhaps the National Guard’s finest peacetime response.”

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens was a significant historical incident – not only to the Pacific Northwest, but to the nation as a whole with ash covering nearly a dozen states. The devastation encompassed over 150 square miles and was the largest environmental disaster since the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. President Carter also announced during his visit, a federal disaster area declaration, and met with hundreds of evacuated residents at the Longview Middle School, Washington, having escaped the volcano’s 26 megaton force. The massive wall of debris and choking ash killed 57 people and caused nearly $1.1 billion in property damage, while hindering the ports along the Columbia River basin.

Naval Officer and Valiant first responder

Prior to his election to the nation’s highest office, James Earl Carter, Jr., graduated from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland in 1946, and to date, is the only president to have attended the U.S. Naval Academy. Within days of his graduation, he married Rosalynn Smith, having known since his childhood growing up in Plains, Georgia. The couple were married for more than 77 years at the time of her passing on Nov. 19, 2023 at the age 96, and together had four children.

When receiving their first duty stations, newly graduating midshipmen had to draw lots to determine their choice of assignments. Ensign Carter’s number was near the bottom and he would be assigned to the oldest navy ship in operation, the USS Wyoming, a battleship first commissioned in 1912. Within a year, he would be re-assigned to the USS Mississippi working as an Engineering officer, and subsequently was given a choice to advance to a specialized career in either intelligence, the naval air force, or submarines.

After being selected for the submarine program, he began the demanding training in New London, Connecticut in 1948. In his autobiography, “A Full Life, Reflections at Ninety,” Carter recounted the dangers and distinctive perils of submarine duty.

“Although some enlisted men could concentrate almost exclusively on their own fields of responsibility as engine men, electricians, torpedo experts, boatswains, quartermasters, gunners or operators of navigation and fire control equipment, every officer was expected to master all of these disciplines…we knew one mistake could endanger everyone aboard.”

Lieutenant Carter, now working in the emerging nuclear submarine program under Admiral Hyman Rickover, was being groomed as an engineering officer aboard the USS (SSN-575) Seawolf, just the Navy’s second nuclear submarine. In December of 1952, the Chalk Water nuclear reactor northwest of Ottawa, Canada, experienced a partial meltdown to the NRX reactor core when fuel rods began to overheat after a dual mechanical and operator error.

The Navy sent Carter and his crew to Chalk Water to repair the reactor, which required it to be shut down, taken apart and replaced. They built an identical replica of the reactor on an adjacent tennis court to precisely run through the repair procedures, due to the maximum time humans could be exposed to the levels of radiation present in the damaged area. Each member of the 22 member team could only be lowered into the reactor for 90-second periods to clean up and repair the site. Carter himself was lowered into the building to work on the reactor casing. When the mission was finally complete with no loss of life, the group was tested routinely for the long-term health effects.

“They let us [crew members] get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now.” Carter said, reflecting on the incident during an interview with CNN in 2008. “We were fairly well-instructed then on what nuclear power was, but for about six months after that, I had radioactivity in my urine.”

Carter’s extensive knowledge and personal experience of nuclear reactors would later come into play when he became president. On March 28, 1979, an accident at the Three Mile Island, unit 2 reactor, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, led to the partial core meltdown similar to the Chalk River incident. President Carter ordered phone lines set-up between the White House, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Pennsylvania State House, in Harrisburg, helping support early response actions, then the president personally toured the site five days later on April 1, boosting public confidence in the ongoing clean-up operations.

Legislator, Governor and President

When his father died during the summer of 1953, Lt. Carter would leave active duty to take over the family farming business back in his boyhood home of Plains. It was a difficult decision for the family, with an unknown future, but one that would take him to serve in local and state politics in Georgia. He won and held a State Senate seat from 1963 to 1967. After an unsuccessful campaign for Governor in 1966, he was elected in 1970 after a run-off against former Governor Carl Sanders. It was during his inaugural address on January 12, 1971, Carter publicly declared that…“I say to you quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over.” He would continue to be an advocate of civil rights throughout his time in elected office and an advocate for human rights and democratic values.

In 1976, in the fallout of the Watergate scandal, Carter began an improbable run for the White House. He won both the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Democratic primaries, and eventually defeated President Gerald R. Ford, Jr., in the general election on November 2, 1976, garnering 297 electoral votes. While in office he created two new important cabinet positions; the Departments of Education and Energy, establishing a comprehensive energy program that would increase domestic oil production and focus on developing renewable sources. To highlight the point, he installed 32 solar panels to the White House, setting new goals to save energy while also boosting renewable sources by the turn of the century. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 24% of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation came from renewable sources in the first six months of 2024.

Like all former Presidents, his term in office from 1977 to 1981 has been debated by historians and political pundits; with extraordinary achievements, and with mixed results, interlinked among turbulent global events. He achieved an historic political agreement between Israel and Egypt during the Camp David accords in September of 1978, leading to a peace treaty the following year, yet his administration struggled under economic stagnation and inflation.

On November 4, 1979, militarized Iranian university students stormed the U.S. Embassy and held 52 American diplomats as hostages for 444 days, impeding his re-election bid in the process. Carter worked through the final hours of his Presidency as the hostages were released during the 49th Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 1981. As Ronald Reagan was sworn into office, now former President Carter flew to West Germany as a representative of the new President. When Carter arrived aboard Air Force One, he was greeted by West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt at Rhein-Main Air Base.

Just a week before, as a young Army Private, I’d also traveled through Rhein-Main, en route to my new duty station. On January 21st, a group from our ‘Intel Shop’ listened on Armed Forces Radio as Carter arrived; then later meeting with the hostages at the U.S. Air Force hospital in Wiesbaden. It was a captivating moment of history. In the mess hall the next morning, we passed shared copies of ‘Stars and Stripes’ around the breakfast table.

“Wiesbaden, church bells pealed Wednesday morning to honor the 52,” wrote ‘Stars and Stripes’ reporter Bill Walker, describing the day’s events and the happy homecoming. “The crowd, estimated at 3,000, waved American flags and held signs that read, “Welcome Jimmy, you’re still number one with us,” and “We still love you, Mr. Carter.”

Recognition and a Greater sense of purpose

After leaving the White House, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter returned to Plains, where they established the Carter Center, and in 1986, led an international campaign to eradicate over 3.5 million cases of the Guinea worm disease in Asia and Africa. The disease has been reduced by more than 99 percent, with only 14 provisional cases in five countries in 2023. The Carter Center has also worked with the United National Electoral Assistance Division in over 110 nations, promoting democratic, transparent and fair elections. In 2002 President Carter was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize for his “decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” He is one of only four U.S. Presidents to receive this honor.

The U.S. Navy has recognized the former President Jimmy Carter with two distinct honors. On June 5, 2004, President Carter and his family attended the christening of the USS (SSN-23) Jimmy Carter, as former First Lady Rosalynn Carter sponsored the ship. It was the Navy’s third and final Seawolf-class nuclear-powered submarine. On February 17, 2023 the U.S. Naval Academy announced that Maury Hall on campus was now renamed to honor former President Jimmy Carter, and is part of the U.S. Congress commission on renaming military assets because of Confederate ties.

The author of over 30 published books, former President Carter also taught weekly Sunday school classes at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains for decades. It was in March of 1984, that Jimmy and Rosalynn first began volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. Together they worked in 14 countries; building, renovating and repairing over 4,300 homes. They worked until 2020 as volunteers with Habitat for Humanity, but while working on homes in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in summer of 2005, a distinct truckload of lumber arrived for building roof trusses.

“I was leading a group of volunteers on building Habitat for Humanity homes,” he detailed in his autobiography, “The lumber had been cut from new-growth trees from the base of Mount St. Helens, and the timber company wanted us to use it on these homes for poor families.”

In many ways, a most fitting and noble tribute to his humanitarian work, and long term vision when establishing the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in 1980.

Sources:

– “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety,” by Jimmy Carter

– The Stars and Stripes Newspaper, “Thousands cheer hostages in emotional return to freedom,” by Bill Walker, Jan. 22, 1981

– KATU News archive, Portland, Oregon, May 22, 1980

– CBS 60 Minutes, “Jimmy Carter’s White House Diary,” 2010 interview with Lesley Stahl

– The Associated Press, “Naval Academy renames building after Jimmy Carter,” Feb. 17, 2023

– CNN Films’ ‘Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President’, Dec. 2020

– NuclearEnergy.net, “Nuclear Accident in Chalk River – Ontario, Canada”

– PBS, The American Experience, “Meltdown at Three Mile Island”

– The Carter Center, website

– The United States Naval Academy, website

– U.S. Energy Information Administration, (eia.gov) website

– CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN News archives/websites

– USDA Forest Service website

– Habitat for Humanity, website

– Maranatha Baptist Church, Plains, Georgia, website