As the country continues to honor and remember the legacy of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Connecticut Public looked back to April 1985, when the former president spoke to an audience of 3,000 at Central Connecticut State University.
“I grew up as a farm boy in a depression when we didn’t have electricity, we didn’t have running water. We had no machinery on the farm. It was all mules and horses and hand labor,” Carter told the crowd. “But my mother and father had ambitions for me, and I relished those ambitions, and I was able to go from that background and environment to be governor of Georgia and then President of the United States.”
Carter delivered the annual Robert C. Vance lecture at CCSU in New Britain. The presentation lasted about an hour, but it was a historic moment for the university, which also marked the first time Central awarded an honorary degree. Renata Vickrey, archivist and community outreach librarian at Central Connecticut State University, shared her insights on this landmark occasion with Connecticut Public.
Significance of Jimmy Carter’s visit to Central Connecticut State University in 1985
It was an important year in national politics and international politics, Vickrey said, but for Central what was significant was Carter was the first United States president visiting the university.
“Most of all, he was a champion of education. He stood by his beliefs and elevated the Education [Secretary] to a cabinet position during his presidency,” Vickrey said. “To invite President Carter to campus aligned with what Central represented and what President Carter believed in – good quality of public education.”
In his speech, Carter emphasized that he was born on a farm in Georgia and continued working on the farm after his father’s passing.
”That was also a perfect example for our students that one can have a humble beginning and rise to the highest post in the country to become the president of the United States,” she said.
Main themes of Carter’s speech
The topic of his lecture, “American Leadership in a Changing World,” was very significant, Vickrey said.
Carter recalled being a Navy officer in New London in the late 1940s.
“He recalled that his first son was born here. And also he had very fond memories of that time. And he held very high regard for Connecticut Gov. Ella Grasso,” Vickrey said.
Grasso, the state’s first female governor, held office at the same time Carter was in the White House.
“When he referred to the time in the Oval Office as a president, one of the events that he recalled, he brought the presidents of Egypt and Israel to Camp David to negotiate peace,” Vickrey said. “They signed the document known as the Camp David Accords in 1979 and it ended decades of war between those two countries. We know that this topic is still relevant today.”
Carter also discussed his work after he left office, including advocacy for the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity, building the presidential library, and of course, teaching.
Carter stepped in others’ shoes during nuclear negotiations speech
One moment stood out to Vickrey.
“There was one passage during his speech when he was recalling the negotiation with the party secretary of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, and signing the nuclear weapons limitations in Vienna,” Vickrey said. “He took the globe, looked at the map of the Soviet Union, and he was trying to be in the position of Brezhnev, and trying to see how he would approach the negotiation with the great powers like the United States.”
Carter told the audience he had to step in the other side’s shoes.
“I had a constant awareness of the need to understand the attitude of the Soviet leaders,” Carter said. “I would put myself in the position of Brezhnev, who didn’t have access to warm oceans for his ships, who had a very limited economic system and practically no production compared to ours in the fields of his country to produce food, who didn’t have friendly allies to the north like Canada, to the South, like Mexico, but who feared his major neighbor, the Chinese. And when I got to the negotiating table, I tried to understand his position.”
Vickrey said that effort to reach understanding set Carter apart.
“Maybe for some people, that would be a sign of weakness,” she said. “But for me … that was a sign of a really skillful diplomatic approach.”
This story was first published Jan. 9, 2025 by Connecticut Public.