fb-pixelWhile Jimmy Carter slept - The Boston Globe Skip to main content
Primary Memories

While Jimmy Carter slept

Jimmy Carter met workers at the J.F. McElwain Shoe Co, in Manchester, N.H. in 1976. Associated Press/File

Back at the beginning of 1976, former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter was aggressively campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in the New Hampshire primary. On his campaign trips, one of the methods he used to distinguish himself from the pack of Democrats was to stay overnight in the homes of supporters, rather than in hotels.

One of those homes was mine, in Concord. As arranged, Carter showed up late one January evening, after flying in through a major snow and ice storm. One of his staff dubbed it the “white-knuckle flight.”

Carter was obviously tired from a day of campaigning, but he graciously took some time to have a friendly conversation with my late wife and me.

Advertisement



Then we all retired to our bedrooms upstairs, leaving his Secret Service escorts on guard downstairs.

Everything was peaceful until around 3 or 4 a.m. Then, the snow from the storm that had accumulated on our steep-pitched slate roof slid off toward the ground, shaking the house and landing with a thunderous thud. Alarmed, the Secret Service guys came pounding up the stairs to check whether the candidate was OK. That in turn set our dogs barking at what they thought were intruders. But after a short while, the pandemonium abated and all became quiet once again.

The next morning, I came down to breakfast and found the candidate seated at the kitchen table. He was friendly and serene, as if nothing had happened.

With the early morning avalanche in mind, I asked him how he had passed the night. He replied that after he had turned off his light around midnight, he had slept soundly all night before waking at 7 a.m.

From that, I concluded that he either had the clearest conscience or was the smoothest liar I’d ever met, and that in either case he would make a fine president.

Martin Gross is an attorney, a former mayor of Concord, and a longtime Democratic activist in New Hampshire.

Advertisement