Former President Jimmy Carter died December 29, 2024, at 100 years old. Here are some of my recollections about him and my old boss Gerald R. Ford. Theirs was an unusual and touching relationship that didn’t start well.
I went through a presidential election from inside the bubble as the president’s chief White House photographer and President Gerald R. Ford delivered quite a ride. I watched him go from thirty-four points down after the 1976 Republican Convention to “too close to call” the day before the election. My favorite Maxwell Smart quote sums it up, “Missed it by that much . . .” Jimmy Carter ruined the journey, beat Ford in a squeaker, and became the 39th President of the United States.
My initial glimpse of the one-term Georgia governor was at his first debate with President Ford in Philadelphia. He seemed diminutive compared to former football center Ford who was six feet tall, but in fact he was only a couple of inches shorter. Carter was wearing that famous toothy grin and I immediately disliked him, his smile, and what he was trying to do to my boss.
President Ford did well in the first debate but stumbled in the second when he said, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe . . .” What he intended to say, should have said, was that the “spirit” of the Polish people would never be dominated by the Soviet Union. What he intended and the words he spoke might have cost him the election, it was that close of a race. To his dying day President Ford would get mad about what he felt was a misinterpretation of his statement. He knew what he meant, but everybody else didn’t. He was stubborn on that one until the end.
The day after the election, November 3, 1976, President Ford called Carter from the Oval Office to concede. He was so hoarse from campaigning that he could barely talk, so he put Dick Cheney, his chief of staff, on the phone to read his concession statement. Afterwards Mrs. Ford and the family joined him. It was a sad day for all of us, particularly him.
President Gerald R. Ford held his first meeting after losing with President-elect Jimmy Carter on November 22, 1976. Incredibly, it was the first time Carter had been in the White House. The two sat near the fireplace in the Oval Office. I was behind the president’s desk looking for an angle when President Ford unexpectedly reached out and shook hands with Carter, saying, “I’m sorry, but I haven’t formally congratulated you on winning the election.” It was a spontaneous moment not for the public benefit, but a genuine signal of respect. My wide-angle frame of that gesture featured the desk in the foreground, covered with papers. On the other side of that historic room the man who was president shook hands with the man who would be. In my mind it metaphorically showed the vastness of the job with mere mortals in temporary custody of its vast powers.
President Ford had pledged a smooth transition and it was. Chief of Staff Dick Cheney led the effort for the president, and Jack Watson for Carter. Ford’s cooperation started right after Carter was nominated at the Democratic convention. The president directed that Carter be given highly classified intelligence briefings so he would be prepared if he won the election. To show his seriousness the president had CIA Director George H.W. Bush personally brief Carter at his home in Plains, Georgia right after he was nominated.
When President elect Carter arrived at the White House for his initial visit, three weeks had elapsed since the election, but the transition was fully underway. The two discussed every element of the job, particularly what was happening with national security. The president and Carter went through binders filled with sensitive material with Cheney and Watson in the meeting.
When their meeting ended Ford told Carter that he wanted to show him something. They went to his private hideaway right next to the oval office. President Ford made a from-the-heart offer. He said, “Jimmy, I’d like you to have this office during the transition if you want.” He told the president-elect that he would be available to him anytime. Carter seemed taken aback at the proposal. The president’s private secretary Dorothy Downton who was working in there appeared to regard Carter as if he had just landed from Mars. Like most of us, this wasn’t a visit she had been welcoming. As magnanimous as the proposition was to take over his private space the president-elect demurred. He didn’t want to muddy the waters as to who was in charge until he took over, and he spent a good deal of his time before the inauguration at home in Plains.
When the two leaders walked out of their meeting to greet the press, President-elect Carter told them, “There cannot have been a better demonstration of unity and friendship and good will than there has been shown to me by President Ford since the election.”
On January 20, 1977, the Fords greeted the Carters as they arrived at the White House for what for the most part has become a traditional rite, a pre-Inaugural coffee in the Blue Room of the Executive Mansion. It was a friendly gathering, considering the circumstances. The two leaders had a quiet and private moment, a portrait of George Washington between them. I felt the history.
President Ford wanted a group photo of everyone, and assembled the Carters, Vice President and Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller, and Vice President-elect and Mrs. Walter Mondale. If you didn’t know what was happening it looked like a group of old friends, not the heads of the incoming and outgoing administrations.
Then it was time for the Fords and Carters to take that short car ride together up Pennsylvania Avenue to the U.S. Capitol for the Inauguration. Six outgoing presidents chose not to attend their successor’s inaugurals. John Adams in 1801 for Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural, John Quincy Adams didn’t attend Andrew Jackson’s in 1829, Andrew Johnson disliked U.S. Grant and boycotted his 1869 ceremony, Woodrow Wilson made it to the Capitol but chose to skip Warren Harding’s formalities in 1921, Richard Nixon passed on Gerald Ford’s 1974 East Room swearing-in, and Donald Trump famously bailed out to Florida before Joe Biden was inaugurated in 2021. After all, he was still insisting quite wrongly that he won the election. Haven’t heard the word “rigged” this time around.
Carter remembered that trip to the Hill many years later as, “an uncomfortable ride.” The picture bears it out. Because there was no room for me to squeeze into the limo, I mounted a camera between Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, and Sen. Howard Cannon of the Inaugural Arrangements Committee. I strung the shutter release cable to the front where the Secret Service agent riding shotgun agreed to take the pictures. Before the motorcade left the North Portico of the White House I asked the Speaker to scoot over to his left so he wouldn’t block the shot. He happily obliged. Afterwards the agent told me that he didn’t think the photos would be that good because, “the two of them didn’t say much.” He was wrong about the image—the picture told the story.
Although I would have preferred seeing President Ford being sworn-in, not Jimmy Carter, it still was the kind of moment that I live to document. I was witnessing what our country normally represents. A peaceful and honorable transfer of power. One where everybody pulls together. An American tradition and democratic staple of our free society, at least it was until the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021. This time around the election was certified by Congress on January 6 without incident with Vice President Kamala Harris, the defeated presidential candidate, presiding. She said that the official electoral count, "shall be deemed a sufficient declaration" for Trump to take his oath of office on January 20. That had to hurt, but she did it with class.
As Ford watched his rival become president, Carter’s first words of his inaugural address were, “For myself and for our Nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land.” It was a fitting tribute to outgoing President Ford.
During the transition President Carter’s press secretary Jody Powell was asked who was going to be Carter’s chief White House photographer. “Nobody,” he said, “we don’t want another David Kennerly in the White House.’
When I heard that I laughed. For one thing there’s no way I would have stayed and of course wasn’t asked, but it did reflect my rather high profile as Ford’s photog, a fact that President Ford found amusing and non-threatening.
Carter also railed against a Nixon-style “imperial presidency,” so I suppose having his own photog in his mind was part of that. He did, however, keep my photo staff, but didn’t appoint a chief or give them much access. His historical visual legacy reflects that, and not in a good way.
A few months after Carter took office I was given an assignment from Time Magazine to photograph Vice President Mondale at work. When I showed up at the White House it was my first time back since leaving. It was a bizarre experience for me. Everything looked the same except that all the offices were occupied by strangers. Mondale sensed that and said, “It must be tough coming back here after all you went through here.” I was touched that he had noticed and teared up for a second. It was indeed difficult. Those memories never go away.
Two of Jimmy Carter’s presidential high points were the Panama Canal Treaty and brokering a deal between Egypt and Israel at Camp David that ended up being formalized by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the East Room of the White House. I was there to document the historic event. The Camp David Accords are working to this day and have resulted in an enduring peace between the two countries despite major turmoil in the area.
Carter won the 1980 Democratic Presidential nomination despite an insurgent bid by Sen. Ten Kennedy. I was at the convention in New York when Kennedy appeared with Carter, but it didn’t appear to be a warm and fuzzy meeting. It did, however, make a good pictue!
After Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide in the 1980 election, President Carter also made that uncomfortable ride with President-elect Reagan on January 20,1981. The Carter people approved me putting a camera in the car, and once again my Secret Service agent friend pulled the trigger! Carter looked like Ford did during his unhappy journey to the ceremony where he would very publicly lose his job.
Outside the U.S. Capitol I made a photo of the newly minted President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan with Carter and Mondale behind then on the Inaugural platform on the West Front of the Capitol. It was the first time it was held in that location and every inauguration since has been staged there.
At that very moment in Iran a crisis that marred Carter’s presidency was coming to an end. Fifty-two U.S. Embassy personnel who had been taken hostage 444 days earlier in Tehran were released minutes after Reagan was sworn in as president. The timing was Iran’s final slap in the face to Carter who had worked tirelessly to get the hostages back home. He was happy that they finally were let go.
President Carter and former President Ford formed a genuine friendship after Ford left office. It was an association that lasted until his death in 2006. They attended each other’s library openings and even showed up for a historic moment at the Reagan Library dedication in 1991 when five presidents stood together for the first time.
Two weeks before Barack Obama was sworn in President George W. Bush invited his former president dad, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter over to the White House to have lunch with President-elect Obama. Carter as always stood apart from the others, I never knew if it was an intentional act, but it wasn’t out of character.
Jimmy Carter lived life his way. Cue Frank Sinatra singing “My Way!”
Photographs by David Hume Kennerly/Center for Creative Photography/University of Arizona