As the nation pauses to remember President Jimmy Carter, the loss of the longest-living president is being felt in the Schenectady area, where Carter spent some pivotal months long before embarking on a political career. In 1953, Carter and his young wife Rosalynn were stationed in military housing while he studied nuclear physics at Union College. Carter had been tapped to work on a new atomic submarine program. Two decades later, while running for president, the Georgian briefly returned to campus for the only time during the New York primary campaign. Joining me now for more is Schenectady City Historian Chris Leonard.
How did former President Carter wind up in the Capital Region?
After graduating from the Naval Academy, later to be President Carter was tapped by Admiral Hyman Rickover, who was the father of the nuclear Navy, to go specifically to Schenectady to Union College, and to be part of the Knolls Atomic Power Labs in West Milton, which would later become the Kenneth Kesselring Site. While he was in Schenectady, he was taking classes at Union College. He was training NCOs and he was working on the engine and the preparations for the second nuclear submarine, the Seawolf that was being planned.
What was the city like as he would have encountered it at that time?
Well, he's coming into Schenectady in the 1950s, which was really at its full peak with a population over 100,000 people, General Electric and in full sway, Alco doing very well. And it was a busy city with a lot of commerce, a lot of things happening.
What do we know about what Carter's life was like while living in Schenectady?
Well, he lived on Duanesburg Road here in Rotterdam, which was military housing. He was here with Rosalynn and three young children. And he looked back on it as a happy time because he was doing the job he really liked and was greatly respected for and his family was thriving.
He didn't stay here very long. How come?
He was here less than a year. He did extraordinarily well at the Knolls Atomic Power Labs, and it looked like he had a bright future in the military. His father Earl passed away in 1953. And Earl ran the family's peanut farm, which was about 5,000 acres in the small town of Plains, Georgia. And it employed about 1,500 people in that small town. So Jimmy had decisions to make. Was he going to stay career military? Or was he going to go down and take over the family peanut farm? Which he eventually decided to do.
Did he retain any sort of connection with the city or its people in the years after leaving?
Yeah, he did come back in 1976, when he was on the campaign trail and had a stop at Union College where he touted his time here and said that he always considered himself ‘one of you,’ meaning part of the Union family. He was an extraordinarily intelligent man. And he got out of the Naval Academy graduating in the top 10% of the class. And also all of this training that he had in the nuclear field that he did the graduate work he was doing at Union College, came to play during his presidency with the Three Mile Island accident. So it was being explained what was happening at the plant at the time of the failure. He understood it so he could embrace it and speak to it and work to get the right people in the right place to do the right things to make sure nothing, you know, really exploded down there.
To what extent is President Carter's time in Schenectady remember today?
Well, those of us who tune into presidential history, we do remember his time very well. And especially those who are interested in local history. As for commemorations, there is a plaque outside the home he lived on on Duanesburg Road commemorating his short time that he was there.
