Jimmy Carter's visit put a national spotlight on Knoxville and Oak Ridge's energy power

While Appalachian East Tennessee has historically been known for its conservative bend and a belief in limited government, the region over the years has been supercharged by major federal projects.

It's the home of TVA, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Those projects have occasionally drawn Democratic presidents wanting to examine them up close. Jimmy Carter, who visited with TVA and ORNL employees in 1978 while president, was one of them.

And in 1982 after he left office, the Georgian also visited the World’s Fair in Knoxville − in part to be thanked for securing federal dollars for it.

As the 98-year-old former president has now been placed on hospice care and people everywhere are looking back at his life and contributions, a glance at the old Knoxville newspaper clippings also opens windows into his career.

His first and apparently only visit to the immediate Knoxville area while president came on May 22, 1978. He had arrived at McGhee Tyson Air Base on Air Force One that Monday and was taken along a Alcoa Highway, which was dotted with only a few onlookers. He eventually made his way to the Civic Auditorium, where he addressed about 2,500 TVA employees.

Newspaper reports said some were disappointed he did not talk about filling vacancies on the TVA board or that he did not really say much about the proposed Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project, which he opposed.

He then went to ORNL in Oak Ridge, with more people lining the route, including anti-nuclear power protesters.

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At ORNL’s headquarters, he was warmly received by about 3,000 employees and then met with scientists. In a decade when the U.S. had been facing an off-and-on energy crisis due in part to its dependence on foreign oil, he asked scientists what the best use for ORNL could be in solving the nation’s energy needs. The scientists later said he was most interested in the research into nuclear fusion.

Some Tennessee politicians were also on hand or accompanied the president. Gov. Ray Blanton greeted him at the airport but was evidently told he could not ride with the president or in any special limousine. Also, Sen. Howard Baker’s wife, Joy, had just gotten out of Baptist Hospital and could not travel with the entourage.

Although Carter ended up losing his reelection bid in 1980 over such factors as a struggling economy and Americans being held hostage in Iran, he was not forgotten by Knoxville when the 1982 World’s Fair arrived.

Not only had his administration pledged over $40 million in 1970s money to the development of the fair, according to one story, but contacts with foreign governments also increased international participation. One News Sentinel article from 1982 said that Carter budget director Bert Lance used contacts made at the Camp David peace accords to persuade Egypt to have a fair exhibition.

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, visited Knoxville in connection with the fair twice, although only once did they get on the fairgrounds to any extent. On July 13 of that year, the Carters flew in from their retreat mountain cottage in Ellijay, Georgia, to eat lunch with fair development board chairman Jake Butcher at the Butchers’ home, Whirlwind, in Clinton.

Also attending the gathering of about 35 people were Noboru Takeshita, the secretary general of Japan’s ruling party, and his wife, who were in Knoxville because Japan was the honored country at the fair that week. Takeshita would later serve as prime minister of Japan from 1987-89.

Carter told the media then he would be back to get a real look at the fair, and he returned that Oct. 9 as the fair was in its waning weeks. He was greatly feted as he and Rosalynn gathered at the fair site with daughter Amy and grandsons Jason and James Earl III.

“We wouldn’t have had this fair without your tenacity,” said Butcher in a speech between the L&N Station and the Clinch Avenue viaduct. Fellow Democrat U.S. Sen Jim Sasser of Tennessee also told the crowd that Carter had forcefully said to the Washington bureaucracy that there would indeed be a world’s fair in Knoxville and that he believed in it.

The Carters then visited several of the international pavilions, while the Carter grandchildren rode rides with the Butcher children. He then attended a fundraiser for gubernatorial candidate and then-Knoxville Mayor Randy Tyree at Butcher’s United American Bank building, now First Horizon, before leaving.

For Carter, visiting the fair was a return on his investment made on behalf of his country.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Jimmy Carter's visit put Knoxville and Oak Ridge in the spotlight