A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (18 page)

I had been a fisherman all my life, but I didn’t learn to fly-fish for trout until I was governor and living near the cold waters of the Chattahoochee River, which flows through Atlanta. Quite often on weekends at Camp David, I fished in Hunting Creek at the base of the mountain while Rosalynn practiced her casting technique in the pool behind our cabin. Our most gratifying recreational excursions were to Pennsylvania, where we sought out a convenient place to go fly-fishing on weekends. As guests of a private hunting and fishing club, we traveled by helicopter and landed on the farmland of a dairyman, Wayne Harpster, who owned or leased
a good portion of Spruce Creek, about twenty-five miles south of Penn State University. We formed an immediate friendship with him and his entire family, and began to go there quite regularly.

We would helicopter to Camp David, be met by a horde of news reporters as we disembarked, and then proceed to our cabin while they went to nearby motels to await our return to Washington. We changed clothes, collected our fishing gear, returned to the helicopter, and flew another thirty-five minutes to the Harpster farm, where we landed in a remote pasture near our cottage. We did this during our last two years, and these fishing expeditions were never detected by the news media. This has continued to be an annual visit by us, and Wayne has become a regular companion when Rosalynn and I go fishing on other exotic streams in the world. Our most recent fishing excursions have been to Mongolia to fish for taimen, the largest species of trout; to the Kola Peninsula east of Murmansk, Russia, for Atlantic salmon; and to Argentina (for the fourth time) to fish for trout and other species.

My family helped make my off-duty times in Washington very pleasant, with visits to museums, theaters, and many historic sites, and also just loafing around the White House playing tennis, swimming, bowling, and watching movies. I spent a lot of relaxing hours tying trout flies while listening to good music. All of us are also avid readers, and it was during the weekends that I had a chance to catch up on back reading and prepare for the week ahead, frequently studying voluminous briefing books from my staff. During the first few months, our family and a number of staff members took a speed-reading course every Friday night, which made it much easier for me to read what my secretary informed me was an average of three hundred pages of official documents each day.

Rosalynn and I decided that Amy would attend one of the nearby public elementary schools, which aroused some comment in the news media because it had been assumed that she would go to one of the more elite private institutions. I had been deeply involved in education as a member of the county school board, state senator, and governor, and was committed to the public school system. Rosalynn and I wanted Amy to be deeply involved in the Washington community and with children
of diverse backgrounds. At Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School she had classmates who were from a wide range of families, including blacks, Hispanics, and children of the servants in foreign embassies.

I was still a parent. In July 1977, I received word that our son Chip was renting a home from a man whose close friend was going to be receiving a large quantity of marijuana in the Gulf of Mexico on a fishing boat. I called Chip, and, without telling him what the problem was, I asked him to come home. I learned that he had been invited to go fishing on the boat that was soon to receive the marijuana. The marijuana was transferred, the bust was made, and three tons of marijuana was confiscated. Chip’s contact turned out to be a federal government informer.

I was running every afternoon from five to seven miles, and I usually extended this distance to at least ten miles a day on weekends. During my maximum running times I was averaging about forty miles a week. I kept a careful log of distances run and times required, but this was one of three things we lost when we went back to Plains. (Two superb bamboo fly rods were stolen.) I really enjoyed this daily break from my official duties. By the way, I never ran with Secret Service agents but always with my military aide, who provided constant communication access between me and agencies of the government and the outside world. White House physician Dr. William Lukash, members of my family, and a few guests would sometimes join me. Willie Nelson would run five miles with me when he spent the night at the White House. I lost some weight, and Rosalynn complained that I was too thin. I remember that when I had my first annual physical examination, Dr. Lukash reported that my heart rate was forty-one beats per minute. When some of the news reporters questioned him, a second count was forty.

In September 1979 I decided to enter the ten-thousand-meter race on Catoctin Mountain, near Camp David. I ran the course twice in advance to become familiar with the difficult terrain and timed myself at a few landmarks along the way. On race day I decided to cut my previous best time by four minutes, which proved to be a serious mistake. The weather was unusually warm and humid, and I overexerted and had to drop out of the race, overcome with heat exhaustion. I recovered quickly and handed
out the prizes at the awards ceremony. Although I felt a little weak, I didn’t have any aftereffects. I should have played it safe to make sure I finished, because the news media had a field day with my failure, with photos of my sagging body in many newspapers.

Nobody in our family had ever even seen skis, but we decided to take up cross-country skiing during our weekends at Camp David. There were several convenient places inside the fenced compound, and the surrounding country roads and park area provided excellent trails. Catoctin Mountain Park Superintendent Tom McFadden gave lessons to all the members of our family. I had two notable falls during this time. On a late Sunday afternoon in February 1979 we were going down a steep slope on a newly constructed section of highway. The groomed trail was narrow, and there was about an inch of ice on both sides. My right ski went under the ice sheet, and I fell over on my face. My forehead, cheeks, lips, and chin were slashed. We radioed Dr. Lukash and learned that he was treating Superintendent McFadden, who had had a spill and cut his face even more severely. I rode back to Camp David on a snowmobile, bleeding badly. Dr. Lukash treated all the superficial cuts on my face, and we skied the next day. The big problem was that I was scheduled to make a speech at Georgia Tech on Tuesday. We called Lillian Brown, who was a superb artist with cosmetics, and she applied several layers of greasepaint and powder and accompanied me to Atlanta. I got through the ordeal without embarrassment, but I had to be careful to avoid any broad smiles, which caused the thick makeup to crack.

My other accident occurred two days after Christmas in 1980. With only two inches of snow on the ground, I went out to ski on the steep nature trail behind our cabin at Camp David, and my ski hit a rock. I fell, jammed my left elbow under my body, and broke my collarbone. I went to Bethesda hospital to get it X-rayed and strapped up, then returned to Camp David. This left me partially handicapped during the final few days of my term in office. It didn’t hurt much at first but was uncomfortable when I experienced vigorous handshakes. This happened when we had a reception for the fourteen hundred staff members who worked in and around the White House and also when I went to the Sugar Bowl game
in New Orleans and Georgia’s star player, Herschel Walker, clasped my hand and almost lifted me off my feet. It was six years later, when I was sixty-two years old, that Rosalynn and I became avid downhill skiers.

Amy and I spent a lot of time together, swimming, bowling, and hitting balls on the tennis court. She said she wanted a tree house, and we looked at possible places on the South Lawn. I didn’t want to damage any of the historic trees, so we decided to place the sleeping area up in the tree but supported from the ground. She outlined what she wanted, and I drew the plans, ordered the necessary lumber, and Amy and her friends were soon spending nights up in the green foliage—watched carefully by the Secret Service agents. Later, when Bob Hope came to visit us, he made a wisecrack about being a Republican and I announced that he would be moving from the Lincoln Bedroom to sleep in Amy’s tree house.

Our youngest son, Jeffrey, was an amateur astronomer and borrowed a fine tracking telescope that he set up on the roof of the White House. He studied the various constellations and galaxies and could describe what we were observing. Jeff became friends with Dr. Carl Sagan, who invited us in December 1977 to visit the naval observatory adjacent to the vice president’s home. The Mondale family joined us as Dr. Sagan gave a slide presentation on outer space, including his speculation about life on distant planets. We enjoyed the stargazing, and I wrote a poem about the lovely sight of a flock of geese flying over Washington, their breasts reflecting the city lights.

A Reflection of Beauty in Washington

I recall one winter night

going to the White House roof

to study the Orion nebulae,

but we could barely see the stars,

their images so paled by city lights.

Suddenly we heard a sound

primeval in its tone and rhythm

coming from the northern sky.

We turned to watch in silence

long wavering V’s,

breasts transformed to brilliance

by the lights we would have dimmed.

The geese passed overhead,

and then without a word

we went down to a peaceful sleep,

marveling at what we’d seen and heard.

We were enjoying the White House but missed the large veranda that surrounded the governor’s mansion in Atlanta. The Truman Balcony overlooked the South Lawn, Jefferson Memorial, and the distant Washington airport, and was furnished with little glass tables and straight-back chairs something like those in a soda fountain. We decided to import some comfortable rocking chairs and ordered six from Georgia. After that, our family had a pleasant vantage point from which we could observe a portion of Washington, and we went there especially during late afternoons and at night. This is where I would take important foreign visitors when I wanted our discussions to be relaxed and completely private.

I remember one session with British Prime Minister James Callaghan, who asked for a conversation that would be totally off the record. We had a cocktail while enjoying the new rocking chairs, and he described Great Britain’s economic troubles and told me that the International Monetary Fund was putting pressure on him to reduce their deficit with what seemed to be draconian actions. I interrupted to offer my help in easing the IMF demands, and he said, “No, no! I want you to support their restraints. I want them to force me and my government to do what I know is right but is not politically popular.”

Over the years we invited thousands of our friends to the White House to spend the night, for South Lawn events, concerts, and official entertainment of foreign dignitaries. Rosalynn and her aides and the State Department worked together to prepare the guest lists and did a fine job. We also enjoyed having children and grandchildren of former presidents, but for some reason we made one glaring omission by failing to invite
Margaret Truman, whose father was the president I most admired. We later apologized to her, but I will always regret this mistake.

The president of India died when I had been in office just a few weeks, and I called Mama to see if she could represent our country at the funeral. She had been a Peace Corps Volunteer in a village near Bombay when she was seventy years old and had become well known in the country. When she answered the phone I asked her what she was doing. She said she was sitting around the house looking for something to do, and I said, “How would you like to go to India?” She said, “I would love to go someday. Why?” And I said, “How about this afternoon?” She said, “Okay, I’ll be ready.” When I described the purpose of the trip, she asked me to have an appropriate black dress ready when she arrived in Washington, and I agreed. She was accompanied to the service by our son Chip and some members of Congress who had a special interest in India, and I authorized the plane to fly the funeral party to Bombay (now Mumbai) after the services, to let Mama visit her former Peace Corps post. It was a town of about twelve thousand people named Vikhroli, and when they arrived at its entrance only a few people were there to meet my mother. She was disappointed but asked to visit the little room where she had lived. When they turned a corner, thousands of waiting villagers, who had been perfectly quiet, burst into wild applause when they saw the woman they called Lilly.

My family spared me a lot of overseas travel, as Rosalynn, our sons, and my mother attended the funerals of President Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Prime Minister Golda Meir in Israel, and the presidents of India, South Korea, and Algeria, plus historic birthday events in England, Australia, Canada, and several countries in Latin America. On one occasion, when I had a number of difficult diplomatic challenges in South America and couldn’t make the trip myself, Rosalynn toured seven nations for
meetings with presidents and other top officials. After careful briefings from the State Department and the CIA, she carried personal messages from me urging President Ernesto Geisel of Brazil to abandon his plans to reprocess nuclear fuel for weapons and the leaders of Peru and Chile to reduce their purchases of armaments, and to inform the president of Colombia that one of his cabinet officers was accepting bribes from drug cartels. Rosalynn was, if anything, more frank and forceful in her presentations than Secretary of State Cyrus Vance or I would have been.

Rosalynn went out of her way to plan entertainment for foreign dignitaries that was most likely to please them. She checked in advance with the CIA, State Department, and the visitor’s embassy in Washington and ours in the foreign country, and the performances at state banquets accommodated the interests of our guests. Carmen Romano, wife of Mexican President José López Portillo, was a concert pianist, so at our dinner for them Rudolf Serkin played several selections and then Carmen surprised our guests with her performance. Japanese Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira liked informality and popular music, so Bobby Short sang while we served barbecue on the roof of the West Wing, overlooking the Rose Garden. President Anwar Sadat said he watched western films every day and requested that the Statler Brothers perform. The New York Harp Ensemble played while King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola of Belgium dined with us, and a group of young Suzuki violin students, including Amy, played. Then a few of the more advanced violinists, some as young as seven, joined the U.S. Marine String Band as an impromptu finale. As a special treat for all Americans, Rosalynn arranged a series of Sunday afternoon performances that were recorded and televised by PBS.