Meeting Rosalyn Carter
As some of you may know, I played music twice in the White House during the Carter administration. At the second one of these, a staff Christmas party, President Carter was extremely busy as this was during the Iran hostage crisis and so he came downstairs to address the crowd for a moment, then went back to work. And so the photo pops were handled by Mrs. Carter. We only spoke to her for a moment but the difference in dealing with her and the social secretary was obvious. The social secretary was professionally polite and sort of phony warm while the First Lady came across as really genuine.
We were playing Renaissance music. That’s why we’re in costume. I still own the costume I”m in somewhere, though I don’t fit in it any more. It was custom made for me by a woman who was with the dance troupe that we sometimes performed with. She eventually got recruited by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC to make costumes for their theater company, which is the main organization performing Shakespeare in Washington. Most of the time we did not perform with dancers but for some occasions, like the local Renaissance Festival, at that time taking place in Columbia, MD, we went with everyone because the festival wanted us wandering around in those costumes. We played a bunch of odd places, including the opening of what was at the time a major local shopping mall, the British embassy, the Japanese embassy, and on a barge being pulled by a mule on the C&O Canal. The British embassy gig led to the White House, but that’s another story.
A photo was taken. I am lucky enough to be beside her. We also got individual letters from the White House Social Secretary. If nothing else, they help remind us when we played.
11/27/2023 @ 5:25 pm
This is outstanding!
I admire the Carters so much.
11/28/2023 @ 1:30 pm
I stood next to her once also. It was at an open air market and she walked up, broke from her group and stood directly in front of me to see a vendor’s wares. She turned around and said “Hello”, to which I cleverly responded “Hello to you ,too.”
11/29/2023 @ 5:59 am
The closest I ever got to either of them was to shake hands with Walter Mondale when he came to speak at my high school in 1980. The speech was in our large auditorium, and when it ended, Mondale walked out through the center aisle. I was about 2 seats away from the aisle, so I stood on the arms of the seat and leaned over to reach the V.P. I guess Mondale wanted to reward the effort and reached for my hand to shake it. As much as I admired Mondale before, and since, I was thinking at the time that this was Jimmy Carter’s V.P.
My disconnect regarding my feelings about the Carters, and how they were treated in the press, led me to conclude that the job of President of the U.S. is a crappy job.
11/29/2023 @ 5:56 pm
[DARK]
*Godspeed Rosalyn Carter💘