A memory of Jimmy Carter on his 99th birthday

On Jimmy Carter’s 99th birthday, there are so many memories. Even at such an advanced age, he still wakes up about 5 a.m. each morning. This is a time when his memory is particularly sharp. Chip Carter said his father recently recounted his 1978 state visit to France with French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in astounding detail and “ended this 20-minute conversation with, ‘And, his wife was a really good dancer!'”

I was on President Carter’s 1978 trip to France for ABC News. Working in European countries was always enjoyable for me — much more than visiting a foreign land as tourist. President Carter had toured the Normandy beaches and it had been a long, but memorable day.

On the night of Jan. 5, 1978 in Bayeux, France, just after the President had visited the war dead at the cemetery along the Normandy coast, we were all exhausted. The senior ABC workers had been given the night off.

As the junior member of the group, I was assigned to stay in an ABC mobile unit during the night. The ABC vehicle sat next to another mobile unit manned by an all-French TV crew. I settled in for what I expected to be a long and uneventful night.

All was quiet until I was awakened and told that President Carter wanted to make unexpected last-minute remarks from a small courtyard near our mobile units. The President’s remarks would air live on the morning talk shows back in the United States, which meant he would go on the air in the very early morning hours in France. Just after his short speech, Carter would then board a train with French President Giscard d’Estang to travel to Paris.

The president’s live speech would air in about an hour and no one had planned for this early morning broadcast. Knowing I was on my own, I began to try to figure out what to do. To get the audio of this live feed from the plaza, an audio cable would have to run from the ABC unit I manned to the French unit next door. The problem was the audio connectors. The American cables used XLR connectors and the French truck had banana jacks for the audio connections.

Thinking quickly, I noted a plate of fromage frais (fresh cheese) and other goodies in the ABC truck that the French had provided to us. I took the knife from the plate and sliced the connector off one end of the XLR audio cable and then stripped several of the wires to bare copper. After twisting the wires, I took toothpicks from the plate and a roll of gaffer’s tape and walked over to the French truck. There, I stuck the bare wires into the holes of the banana jacks and used toothpicks to hold them. I then secured the toothpicks with gaffer’s tape.

Believe it or not — after a brief test — the audio worked. The French, who couldn’t speak a word of English, and I, who knew no French, cheered and laughed hysterically. It was a great bonding moment, the kind I love while working in a foreign country.

Within minutes, senior ABC engineers arrived on the scene — totally mystified by what I had done. But Carter had to speak within minutes and my set-up worked. That’s all that really mattered, so they left it alone. The President of the United States successfully made his speech over my jury-rigged set-up. The ABC engineers congratulated me for thinking creatively through the situation.

The day was a remarkable day for the President and me as a kid solving problems in the middle of night in France.