{"id":173355906,"date":"2024-12-31T00:10:09","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T05:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/casey.com\/blog\/?p=173355906"},"modified":"2024-12-31T00:13:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T05:13:52","slug":"when-i-met-jimmy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/2024\/12\/31\/when-i-met-jimmy\/","title":{"rendered":"When I Met Jimmy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The title of this blog post that you\u2019ve only just begun to read is very misleading. Because I didn\u2019t really \u2018meet\u2019 President Jimmy Carter, like to have even a brief conversation with any level of meaningfulness. I stood in a receiving line to shake his hand, twice, and the resulting photo tells the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was 1989, and I was an \u2018Account Coordinator\u2019 for the DC public affairs firm that represented the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And despite my low level status, I was even a \u2018registered foreign agent\u2019 in this role (which never really lived up to being as cool as it sounded). Anyway, the Saudis had a cultural exhibition traveling around the US, drumming up some positive vibes (which proved to be well timed given Iraq\u2019s invasion of Kuwait the following year), and this exhibition visited Washington, DC, Atlanta, New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles. And despite being a junior nobody whose role was to find venues for the troupe of Saudi folkloric dancers to visit, it was my first real experience with business travel and related gala events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When our tour reached its second stop, Atlanta, the gala opening demonstrated the Saudi\u2019s ability to bring out political VIP\u2019s, and so President Jimmy Carter was their trophy guest at opening night. I walked through the receiving line and shook his hand, and that was that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among our team was a former White House photographer, Karl, an amazing guy who had great stories, and he asked me, \u201cHave you been through the receiving line? I\u2019ll get your picture.\u201d I let him know that I had already had my handshake, and so, photo op missed. And he said, \u201cIt\u2019s not a long line, go again, and look at the camera!\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I got back in the line, just moments after already having been through it. And I shook President Carter\u2019s hand, again. And I remembered to look at the camera. He didn\u2019t. He looked at me like he was thinking, \u2018weren\u2019t YOU just here?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m glad to have \u2018met\u2019 him, twice kinda. I learned that \u2018grip and grins\u2019 are better when you\u2019re looking at the person whose hand you\u2019re shaking. But from Jimmy, I have also learned from his example of the service he provided to America, and to the world, long after his presidency. Thank you President Carter, and may you rest in peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of this blog post that you\u2019ve only just begun to read is very misleading. Because I didn\u2019t really \u2018meet\u2019 President Jimmy Carter, like to have even a brief conversation with any level of meaningfulness. I stood in a receiving line to shake his hand, twice, and the resulting photo tells the story. It was 1989, and I was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,44,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173355906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guidetolife","category-photos","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mOvc-bJnN0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173355906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173355906"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173355906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173355910,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173355906\/revisions\/173355910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173355906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173355906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173355906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}