Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday, visited Spokane to open Riverfront Park, offer aid after St. Helens eruption

As president, Jimmy Carter visited Spokane to celebrate one if its best environmental achievements of the last century and to offer help after one of its worst environmental disasters.

He helped open Riverfront Park in 1978, dedicating the land along the Spokane River that had been used for Expo ’74. The World’s Fair, which Carter had visited as Georgia’s governor, had been built on restored rail yards and had an environmental theme.

“He was really pleasant, the kind of a guy who really felt for people,” former Spokane County Sheriff Larry Erickson recalled of that 1978 appearance.

Carter, 100, died Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia, where he had been under hospice care for nearly two years.

Nearly half a century ago, he thanked Spokane officials, telling them they had a wonderful city, Erickson said. Carter “worked the line” shaking hands with people who waited to greet him after his speech, but seemed to listen better and spend more time with the crowd than many politicians.

Erickson was behind the head of Carter’s Secret Service detail and could hear some of the conversations: “He was just a genuine person.”

Two years later, Carter arrived with promises of federal help, four days after Mount St. Helens erupted and one day after declaring much of Eastern Washington a disaster area.

“I remember him being very gracious, very concerned and real down to earth,” said Bill Pupo, a former Spokane city manager who at the time was the city’s public information officer. “He pledged to provide federal funds to help with the disaster.”

Erickson, Pupo and then-Mayor Ron Bair had flown to Portland on short notice the day before to join Carter, state and federal officials, and a planeload of journalists coming to the disaster area. There was some talk about canceling the flight to Spokane because some security officials were worried the volcano could erupt again while the planes were in the air, and some scientists had speculated the volcanic ash could have serious health effects. But Carter insisted on going, Erickson said.

When they got to Spokane, however, plans for a helicopter trip to view some of the ash-covered landscape were scrapped for safety reasons.

It was a short trip, but it gave local officials what they most wanted: a presidential promise of continued federal support. The next day, Carter also declared some North Idaho counties disaster areas.

Carter’s post-St. Helens view of Spokane would have been much different than what he saw two years earlier when he accepted the invitation to help dedicate Riverfront Park. A crowd estimated at the time of about 50,000 – reportedly the largest crowd he’d addressed since his inauguration – swarmed into the park.

There was a momentary glitch as the ceremony opened and the assembled dignitaries rose for the raising of the flag. Hand on heart, Carter initially turned the wrong way, but King Cole, one of the driving forces of Expo ’74 who was standing behind him, pointed the president in the right direction.

He called the park a “place of lasting value” and said he was glad the federal government had joined state and local officials to help create it. He also asked the crowd for help in tackling the nation’s problems, like controlling inflation, improving the environment and solving energy problems.

“We must recapture what is best of our national spirit,” he said. “We must put aside regional and selfish interests.”

He also praised fellow Democrats with whom he shared the stage, including then-Sen. Warren G. Magnuson and then-Rep. Tom Foley.

After the park dedication, he held a town hall-style meeting with about 1,800 in the audience at the Convention Center, another legacy of Expo ’74. There, he answered questions about inflation and Social Security, tax policy and Middle East peace.

When one questioner prefaced a query by suggesting Carter was “the best president this country has known in its 201-year history,” he disagreed.

“I am not the best, and when I walk around the White House and realize the quality of my predecessors, it is a very sobering experience and a very inspirational thing,” Carter said before answering the question about inflation making it difficult for young couples to buy a home.

Another questioner prefaced her question by an observation that Carter was “really cute” before grilling him on his plan for national health care.

He replied: “You’re the first questioner that’s made me blush” before saying the nation’s health care needed to evolve in a way that got a handle on costs that were rising much faster than inflation and relied more on outpatient care.

Unlike at some current town hall events, the questioners weren’t preselected. Carter had no way of knowing what would come up, John Bjork recalled.

The convention center was crowded, but the crowd was friendly, said Bjork, then the manager of the city water system. He had skipped the park dedication but attended the town hall in hopes of asking a question.

“There was a big concern about fossil fuels and the supply of petroleum. It was an international concern,” Bjork said. “It just happened that I got in the right place.”

He noticed that whoever sat in a chair in the row ahead of where he was seated would have a chance to ask a question. He moved there, in part, he said to keep “activists” who were in that row from occupying it and asking an embarrassing question.

An Army veteran who had been stationed in South Korea and Germany, Bjork said he always supported the sitting president as the commander-in-chief.

As time went on, however, Bjork began to wonder if the session would end before he got a chance to ask his question.

As it turned out, his question about sending the surplus oil on the West Coast to Japan, and bringing their Middle Eastern oil to other parts of the United States, was near the end of the session.

After a brief explanation of the complicated oil refining system, Carter said he didn’t have the authority to reroute Alaskan oil to Japan because the law requires that oil to go to the United States. But it could be a temporary solution if some of the other plans to get oil to Southern refineries fell through, the president added.

“He answered it the best he could,” Bjork said recently. “I was just pleased to be able to ask the president a question. He was a decent person.”

Spokane was a place for some dramatic foreshadowing of the Carter political story. When he visited Expo ’74 as Georgia’s governor with a handful of other state chief executives, Carter also spoke at a luncheon for the Downtown Rotary. He was asked if he would consider being then-Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s running mate in 1976.

Carter said he and Jackson had been friends for some 25 years, but added he couldn’t predict what would happen in 1976. Instead, he was concentrating on helping Democrats get elected to state and federal offices in that year’s mid-terms.

When Carter appeared at Expo earlier that day with then-Washington Gov. Dan Evans, a Republican, reportedly introduced him as “Jimmy Carter, who may be president of the United States someday.”

As it turned out, he and Jackson both ran for president in 1976. Jackson carried the Washington precinct caucuses, although his candidacy was starting to falter. Carter finished third in the Washington caucuses – behind “uncommitted” – on his way to capturing the nomination. The state, however, went for Gerald Ford in the November election, and for Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Evans, who died in September, said in an interview in 2023 that he didn’t recall that seemingly prescient introduction but did remember Carter coming to Spokane for Expo. The two knew each other well from serving concurrently as governors, and remained friends afterwards. When both were out of office, Carter would lead a delegation of heads of state to observe the Nicaraguan elections of 1990 and invited Evans to come along with a Senate delegation.

In a surprise upset, incumbent Daniel Ortega was ousted by challenger Violeta Chamoro in a well-run election Evans described as a unique opportunity to observe.

He described Carter as “an exceptionally fine office holder” who served his country well.