WASHINGTON, D.C. – Before she was elected to Congress more than four decades ago, Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur worked in President Jimmy Carter’s administration as a domestic policy advisor.
“Time goes very fast," 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. She went from working as a municipal planner in inner city Chicago to spending three years in Washington advising the administration.
“The president wanted to help America's poor neighborhoods. He was utterly committed to that. And so I got picked, I got interviewed, and I got the job,” Kaptur said.
She calls it a “spiritual experience,” one she marks with a photo that hangs in her Toledo office that shows Carter, as president, alongside several Ohio lawmakers and Monsignor Geno Baroni, a priest and social activist who became Carter’s assistant secretary of housing and urban development and worked closely with Kaptur on efforts to help forgotten communities.
Although Kaptur is not in the photo, Baroni signed it with a message: “Marcy - thanks for making this all possible.”
Today, Kaptur is the longest-serving woman in the history of Congress. She won her first election in 1982 and credits Carter with inspiring her to pursue a career in politics.
“It was pivotal. It was pivotal,” Kaptur said. “It was a door opening that was transformative in my own life.”
She said Carter stayed true to his roots in rural Georgia, even as he faced international challenges that consumed his presidency.
Kaptur also applauds 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 has a vivid memory of sitting in on a White House meeting 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 the folks that are beating their chest all the time. It was the way he lived that showed who he was.”
Kaptur said Carter’s decision to spend his long post-presidency largely doing humanitarian work at home and overseas was, in her words, “persevering” and “noble.”
“Just a few times in my lifetime can I say we've had a president that I could truly respect,” the 78-year-old Kaptur said. “And whether he was in office or after office, he was a very productive American citizen.”