WASHINGTON, DC – Before being elected to Congress more than four decades ago, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio worked in President Jimmy Carterof the administration as an advisor on domestic policy.
“Time flies very quickly,” Kaptur told Spectrum News in an interview, reflecting on the final days of Carter’s life.
When Carter became the nation’s 39th president 46 years ago, Kaptur’s life changed. After working as a municipal planner in downtown Chicago, she spent three years in Washington advising the administration.
“The president wanted to help poor neighborhoods in the United States. He was totally committed to it. And so I was chosen, I interviewed and I got the job,” Kaptur said.
She calls it a “spiritual experience,” which she marks with a photo hanging in her Toledo office that shows Carter, as president, alongside several Ohio lawmakers and Monsignor Geno Baroni, a priest and social activist became Carter’s deputy secretary for housing and housing. urban development and worked closely with Kaptur on efforts to help forgotten communities.
Although Kaptur isn’t in the photo, Baroni signed it with a message: “Marcy – thank you for making this possible.”
Today, Kaptur is the longest-serving woman in Congress history. She won her first election in 1982 and credits Carter with inspiring her to pursue a political career.
“It was crucial. It was crucial,” Kaptur said. “It was a door that opened and transformed my own life.”
She said Carter remained true to his roots in rural Georgia, even as he faced the international challenges that dogged his presidency.
Kaptur also praises Carter for creating the Department of Energy, an agency she knows well as the top Democrat on the House committee that funds it.
She said she had a vivid memory of attending a meeting at the White House between Carter and Admiral Hyman Rickover, who oversaw the Navy’s nuclear reactors.
“President Carter was a very intelligent engineer,” Kaptur said. “And he was a red, white and blue patriot. He was so patriotic, but he didn’t wear it on his sleeve like some of these people who beat their chest all the time. It was the way he lived that showed who he was.
Kaptur said Carter’s decision to devote his long post-presidential period to humanitarian work largely at home and abroad was, in his words, “persistent” and “noble.”
“I can say a few times in my life that we had a president that I could really respect,” Kaptur, 76, said. “And whether he was in office or after his term, he was a very productive American citizen.”