Former President Carter on Feb. 24, 2013. Photo: Commonwealth Club of California/Flickr
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter died Sunday, Dec. 29, the Associated Press reports. He was 100, making him the longest-living president in U.S. history. Carter had entered hospice care a year earlier.
I briefly interviewed Carter 25 years ago at an event in South Florida while working as a reporter for Miami station WIOD, NewsRadio 610. He was appearing at Books and Books in Coral Gables in January 1999. That was at the same time as a U.S. Senate trial of President Bill Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice regarding a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinski. I asked Carter his thoughts on the trial, as well as changes in politics since his time in office.
AUDIO: Interviewing former President Jimmy Carter in January 1999 at Books and Books in Coral Gables, Florida.
Much was been written about Carter since his death. While he only served one term, Carter received high praise for how he lived his life. I was very appreciative that he gave me a few minutes going into the event, providing some thoughtful comments to my questions.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
MICHAEL HIBBLEN: What are your thoughts on modern day presidential politics and the investigations of the president and so forth?
FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Well, I don’t think there’s any way to control what the investigations have done. The Congress passed the law, President Clinton signed the law into effect. The Attorney General called for a special prosecutor, a three-judge panel appointed Kenneth Starr when a vacancy occurred, but I think there’s no doubt that the special prosecutor law has been abused by Kenneth Starr. I don’t think that there’s any doubt that after this furor is over, which I hope will be fairly soon, that the law is going to be changed to put some constraints on the time spent and the money spent on investigations.
HIBBLEN: Do you think politics has become more nasty since your days in office?
CARTER: Oh yeah, there’s no doubt about that. It’s become very nasty compared to when I was in office. When I ran against Gerald Ford, who was an incumbent president, and when I ran later against Ronald Regan, he was a governor, former governor, I never referred to them as anything except my distinguished opponent or my worthy opponent. If I had run a negative campaign spot on TV, it would have been suicidal for me. I mean, the people would have condemned me. Nowadays, the common thing is not to win by what you claim that you are going to do if you get in office, but to win by totally destroying the character of your opponent, whether they deserve to be destroyed or not. The problem is the finance laws which permit unlimited use of soft money, as you probably know. The soft money cannot be used by law to promote a candidate. It can be used to tear down an opponent, and that’s one of the root causes of the negative atmosphere that exists not only in Washington but in statehouses like Atlanta and in Tallahassee.
HIBBLEN: So, you feel a lot of changes should come to politics?
CARTER: The change that needs to be done is to change the campaign finance laws. Yeah, because now we have the equivalent of legal bribery. It is legal, but somebody that wants a special favor from the Congress or from the White House, from the governor’s mansion or whatever, gives unlimited amounts of money through various means, and they don’t give it for nothing. They expect some special treatment or they expect their voice to be heard, at least, you know, when the candidate who they have helped finance gets in office. So, that’s what needs to be changed.
I had the most fun I’ve ever had during a pledge drive on Wednesday, Dec. 11 as Arkansas PBS featured an evening airing Willie Nelson’s 90 Birthday Celebration, followed by a 1990 concert with country supergroup the Highwaymen, which was made up of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson.
I’ve long been a huge fan of Willie and have seen him in concert more than any other performer — maybe a dozen times since 1990. I spoke about being introduced to Willie’s music at a young age in the 1970s when my mom would play his 8-tracks Red Headed Stranger and Stardust on every family trip to see my grandparents. I didn’t enjoy Willie then, but over the years watching him perform during the first Farm Aid concert in 1985 and many times on Austin City Limits helped me begin building an appreciation. Eventually seeing him in concert, I realized what an amazing performer he was.
So it was a joy to talk about Willie as we were showing a couple of his concerts. Joining me on the air was singer-songwriter Ryan Harmon, who, despite his young age, has an encyclopedic knowledge of country music. Years ago he had worked in the marketing department at Arkansas PBS, but after being selected for an audition with ABC’s American Idol, took the encouragement he received and is now focused on building his career as a musician.
If you watch the video below, you’ll see we had a great time on the air. The video only features highlights from our local breaks with none of the concerts we were showing to avoid any copyright infringements by posting this to YouTube.
Among the things I spoke about during the pledge drive was my one experience interviewing Willie for a half-hour in South Florida in 2005. I was working for the Miami Herald, which had a partnership providing local news to PBS/NPR station WLRN. You can hear the interview and read a transcript here.
During breaks in the Highwaymen show at Nassau Coliseum, we also talked about the unveiling of the Johnny Cash statue earlier that year in the U.S. Capitol, which I was excited to attend. He and a statue of civil rights pioneer Daisy Bates, unveiled earlier in the year, now represent Arkansas. Each state is allowed two statues, and Bates and Cash were selected by the Arkansas General Assembly in 2019.
Interviewing Willie Nelson in Plantation, Florida on May 26, 2005. Photo: Candace West/Miami Herald
I also discussed covering the restoration years earlier of Cash’s boyhood home in Dyess, which began when Arkansas State University bought the dilapidated farmhouse as part of its Arkansas Heritage Sites program. Fundraising for the project began with a 2011 with a concert in Jonesboro, which included Kris Kristofferson. Willie would perform the second year, with a dedication ceremony of the home eventually held in 2014.
The preserving of the Cash home and placing a statue of he and Bates in Washington are by far my favorite stories to have covered during my long career.
Bob Gay after we met for lunch on July 14, 2004. Photo: Michael Hibblen
I’m sad to learn my high school radio broadcasting instructor Bob Gay died Friday, Dec. 6. He was 87. Bob had a lengthy career working at radio stations and later shared his wealth of knowledge with students. While I later learned more nuanced information in college, especially about journalism, I always felt I got more real world information about this challenging industry from Bob.
In his class at Little Rock’s Metropolitan Vocational Education Center, which I took from 1988-89, he even taught us things like how to cold call program directors to express interest in working for a station. He didn’t sugarcoat the profession, and for those interested in pursuing a career, offered advice on how to build professional relationships and what not to do.
For much of the class we operated as a radio station, with students rotating through different positions each week: being a DJ following a strict format clock, writing and producing commercials, writing and delivering newscasts, and preparing commercial logs. It enabled us to have an understanding of how all broadcast-related positions worked together to make a station function. We operated out of facilities that up until a year earlier had housed a real radio station, KLRE-FM 90.5, which was central Arkansas’s first NPR station and had initially been licensed to the Little Rock School District.
I wish I remembered details of the stations and places where Bob worked. One time in class he put a tape on the reel-to-reel machine and played an aircheck he was clearly proud of him with him being a DJ for a top 40 station, circa 1974. I’m making that assumption on the time period because he played Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown,” which was released that year, several times during his shift. I’m confident that station wasn’t in Arkansas.
Bob eventually worked for KSSN-FM 95.7 in Little Rock starting in the 1970s, which grew to become the top-rated station. Longtime morning man Bob Robbins mentioned Bob Gay while telling a story at a 2015 reunion of radio people. The newscasts at KSSN were recorded, and Bob Robbins said he stumbled midway through a newscast and proceeded to yell a string of expletives. He rerecorded the newscast, but ended up putting the wrong tape into the automation system and those profanities were played on the air. Bob Gay didn’t hear the broadcast, but came out of his office asking, “What did you say? What did you say?” One of the many things Bob Gay taught us was never say anything in a radio studio you wouldn’t want to be broadcast, and perhaps this incident was why.
Bob helped me get my first paying radio job — a small, financially struggling AM station in Benton where most of my paychecks bounced. But it gave me a chance to get some experience, get better on the air, and I got hired at a better, more financially stable radio station six months later. My career progression was exactly what Bob encouraged his students to do. Keep improving our skills, then look for better stations or bigger markets. I ended up working in radio for 34 years and don’t think it ever would have started without Bob. I’m still in broadcasting, but today in television at Arkansas PBS.
I met up with Bob a few times over the years. The last time I saw him was in 2004 during a visit home to Arkansas. He was thrilled that at the time I was working as a news anchor and reporter for a major station in Miami, and he seemed to enjoy hearing my adventures. I wish I’d reached out to him in recent years.
I know there are many other students who learned a great base of knowledge from Bob and went into radio. I hope to see some at his service, scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 12. According to his obituary, it will be at Smith North Little Rock Funeral Home with visitation to begin at 10:30 a.m., followed by the funeral at 11:30.
UPDATE:
I learned a lot more about Bob during his service, and it was wonderful visiting with his wife and childern. A few of Bob’s former students were also there, including Doug Virdin, who was in my class, and Todd Stuart, who had gone through the radio program a few years before me, but who I would eventually work with at KJBR, Power 102 in Jonesboro.
The man who led the funeral spoke about how Bob had grown up in Newport, Arkansas and experienced a few tragedies in his life. During a July 4th celebration, he witnessed the drowning of his 18-year-old brother. He also developed polio in 12th grade and lost all muscle in his legs. Bob ended up having to walk a mile to school each day using crutches while relearning how to walk.
A man who worked at a local radio station saw Bob and started giving him rides. Eventually he brought Bob to the station where he worked, which was the beginning of Bob’s radio career. Eager for more opportunities, he would take jobs at radio and TV stations around the country in markets of all sizes.
Bob met the woman he would later marry on the first day he arrived for a job in Marion, Alabama. He also worked for stations in Burlington, North Carolina, Memphis, Tennessee, and at WBCM in Baltimore, Maryland. I might be missing others.
He eventually returned home to Arkansas, working in Little Rock at KARN, television station KTHV, and as I mentioned earlier, helped put KSSN on the air, with a country format that would dominate Little Rock radio for decades. He also did some on-camera work in TV as a weatherman, though I’m not sure if that was at KTHV. Among photos rotating on screens as the visitation was underway was one showing Bob at a weather map in the pre-radar days, with hand-drawn weather patterns on a board. Another photo showed Bob in front of a large television camera with KTHV on the side.
It was a nice service and I’m glad I learned more about Bob’s life and career. Somehow these details never came out when I was his student or in later years while visiting over lunch.
On the web since 2002, this is the online home of broadcasting news veteran Michael Hibblen. I've worked for newspapers, radio and TV stations around the country, with this website telling the story of my career, including audio, photos and videos. Also featured are various interests I've researched, primarily about radio and railroads. Today I'm Director of Public Affairs at Arkansas PBS, overseeing production of the program "Arkansas Week" and the streaming of events on the Arkansas Citizens Access Network.
My Book
Released by Arcadia Publishing in 2017, Rock Island Railroad in Arkansas delves into the history of the railroad which once had a huge footprint in Arkansas, as well as other states in the middle of the U.S. The book features historic photos and tells the story of the Rock Island, which was shut down in March 1980. READ MORE
For 13 years, from May 2009 to December 2022, I worked for NPR station KUAR-FM 89.1 at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. That included 10 years as News Director while continuing to anchor and report. You can read and hear reports from that time on Little Rock Public Radio's website.
