Drought, politics brought Jimmy Carter to Valley. A look back at Fresno and Merced visits
President Jimmy Carter visited Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley during a drought in the 1970s and again as he ran an unsuccessful campaign for re-election, among other visits.
The 98-year-old and longest lived president entered hospice care over the weekend, choosing to spends his remaining days under care at home rather than in a hospital bed, his family said in a statement on Saturday.
A Georgia peanut farmer himself, Carter visited Fresno County farms in 1977 as growers dealt with drought.
The White House Daily Diary shows he left Los Angeles after meeting with United Auto Workers and touched down at Fresno Yosemite International Airport (then called Fresno Air Terminal) at 3:25 p.m. May 17, 1977.
He was greeted by several officials, including Fresno Mayor Dan Whitehurst and Chairperson of the Democratic State Committee of Northern California Nancy Pelosi, who late last year said she would step back from the leadership position in the House she has held for two decades.
Carter then visited Reedley’s Kryder Farm and Silva Ranch, meeting owners Chuck Kryder and Manuel Silva, respectively, the diary shows.
He left Fresno’s airport at 6:01 p.m. via Air Force One on his way back east.
Fresno Bee archives also feature Carter’s visit to Bill Irwin’s farm in Sanger the previous year, and a later visit in 1980 to Merced during the campaign he lost to President Ronald Reagan.
Carter, who has lived most of his life in Plains, Georgia, traveled extensively into his 80s and early 90s, including annual trips to build homes with Habitat for Humanity and frequent trips abroad as part of the Carter Center’s election monitoring and its effort to eradicate the Guinea worm parasite in developing countries.
“I’m perfectly at ease with whatever comes,” he said in 2015. “I’ve had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
