I was 11 years old and on the way to Disney World when I saw a sign.
“WELCOME TO GEORGIA! Home of U.S. President Jimmy Carter,” the smiling peanut billboard exclaimed, and I thought it was the coolest roadside display I’d ever seen. Better than the giant beer bottle along the interstate in Wheeling when I was a kid, and better than Travis Broadwater’s bearded real estate board near Oglebay last year.
So, I decided to write a letter to President Carter. My mom gave me nice, unlined typewriter paper, an envelope, and a 15-cent stamp, I was taught in school that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was the address of the White House, and my father took me and my letter to the post office for mailing.
I asked President Carter how he went from peanuts to president, what it was like to fly around in a secret airplane, if he ate snacks in the Oval Office, and if his daughter, Amy, ever got grounded to her White House room like I did to my Novotney House room.
President Carter wrote back about a month later. On White House stationary, too.
Although it was a typed correspondence, it wasn’t a form letter because the Commander-in-Chief answered my questions. He stated it was an honor to fly around all over the world in Air Force One, that Amy is a good child most of the time, that he eats peanuts at his desk from time to time, and Jimmy Carter told this single-digit West Virginia kid that if I worked hard, I could earn the American Dream just like he did on his Georgia farm.
It meant something. I remember showing it to my teacher. It was 48 years ago, I believe my mother saved it away in a scrapbook somewhere, and, to me, I think anyway, it made a positive difference.
So, I believe elementary school students should write letters to the President of the United States. They could ask the POTUS questions about what they wonder.
Ya know, before they know what a Republican and a Democrat are.
