Vignettes of Jimmy Carter’s visits to Orange County
Good morning. It’s Wednesday, Jan. 8 and I’m Carol Cormaci bringing you this week’s TimesOC newsletter with a look at some of the latest local news and events.
Coinciding with the day of his official state funeral in Washington, D.C., Thursday will be a national day of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter, who left this world at the age of 100 on Dec. 29. As tributes to the late humanitarian have poured in from around the world, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at times he spent right here in Orange County over the years.
The number of articles that came up when I searched the L.A. Times archives for articles on the late president was overwhelming. It was an impossible task for me to unearth all of the O.C.-related Carter visits to the Southland, so I just focused on the few I had time to review. Take a short stroll down memory lane with me:
On a Sunday in late September 1976, then-Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter became the first Democratic presidential candidate to bring his election campaign to Orange County since 1960. The turnout to welcome him, Times reporter Don Smith wrote, was underwhelming. Carter was in Santa Ana with California Gov. Jerry Brown, Sen. John Tunney and other down-ballot candidates in the November 1976 election to march together in a Mexican Independence Day parade in the downtown area.
Along almost all of the parade route Carter and the other Democrats walked past “virtually empty sidewalks,” Smith reported. It wasn’t until they reached the parade’s reviewing stand on West 4th Street that they encountered an estimated 1,500 people who had been watching the procession from that vantage point. No mention was given in the article as to whether or not loud cheers went up in support of the group, but Smith opined the event suffered from a lack of “local promotion in a county that has become the second largest concentration of Democrats in California.”
Afterward on the same day, Carter, Brown and the others attended a fundraising barbecue at the Mission Viejo ranch of Richard J. O’Neill. There, Carter delivered a speech to the few hundred guests assembled. He spoke on the rapidly rising property tax rates here, a topic that was so heated in California that two years later it led to the passage of Proposition 13, known familiarly as the Howard Jarvis property tax measure. In his speech that day Carter put the blame for the issue not on the shoulders of local property tax assessors but on Congress.
I could not quickly find Carter’s local visits during his presidency, although I’d be willing to bet there were at least a few of them in those four years. I did come across the photo above that shows him jogging through the streets of El Sereno in L.A. County on May 6, 1979 with his host Stephen Rodriguez, two Secret Service agents trailing along. So we know he was at least in the vicinity then. The other items I found were short on details, but here they are:
— Jumping ahead to a decade after he left the White House and was deeply entrenched in humanitarian efforts, Jimmy Carter, accompanied by his wife, Rosalyn, in late June 1990 flew by helicopter into Rancho Santa Margarita for a groundbreaking ceremony at a site where Habitat for Humanity would be building 48 condos for people earning no more than $24,000 annually.
— Anaheim was chosen by the American Booksellers Assn. for its May 1992 convention. The Times noted Carter was there, likely to promote his book “Turning Point,” and was a featured speaker at one of its breakfast events.
— In June 1995, the former president was in Orange County to promote low-income houses to be built as part of the Jimmy Carter Work Project. Among them were three homes in Brea that would go to three single mothers who were receiving no child support.
Maybe some newsletter readers who are longtime residents recall trips Carter made to O.C. while he was the leader of the free world or after he left office. I’d welcome the details.
NEWS
• A veteran firefighter, Kevin Skinner, died Sunday after suffering cardiac arrest at the scene of an early-morning blaze in Laguna Niguel, officials reported. Skinner spent more than 25 years with the Orange County Fire Authority. He was reportedly searching inside a home on Pointe Royale for residents who might be affected by the fire when he felt unwell and then collapsed. He is survived by his wife and three children.
• It won’t come as a surprise to those living locally, but perhaps some of our readers who have moved to other states (or countries) don’t know that much of SoCal has been under red flag warnings due to “life-threatening and destsructive” winds and unseasonably dry brush. A huge fire that broke out Tuesday morning in L.A. County’s Pacific Palisades was out of control as evening fell and had led to thousands of evacuations. The Orange County Fire Authority posted this map to its website showing the degree of danger various sections of this county face. You can find a list of active incidents throughout the day here.
• Huntington Beach High School junior Kelly Reid perished along with her father Pascal Reid last Thursday afternoon when their small, single-engine plane crashed into a furniture warehouse in Fullerton, sending 11 people to the hospital and injuring two others who were treated at the scene. The younger Reid was a student athlete who played lacrosse, flag football and soccer. “Kelly was a natural caregiver and always put others first,” members of her soccer team wrote on a social media post. “She will be deeply missed. Her father was at every single game, always so proud of his daughter.”
CRIME
• Huntington Beach resident and part-time actor Keith Middlebrook was sentenced Monday to 98 months in federal prison for soliciting investors in companies that marketed a fake cure and treatment for COVID-19 at the onset of the pandemic. In addition to the prison sentence, the 57-year-old was fined $25,000.
• A 44-year-old Irvine resident who teaches at Sierra Vista Middle School was arrested after getting snared in a sting operation involving sexually explicit text messages he allegedly sent to an adult posing as a 14-year-old, according to authorities. The teacher, identified as Eric Reid Zuercher, has been placed on administrative leave from the school, according to the L.A. Times story on the arrest.
• Police announced Monday they had arrested 43-year-old Justin Anthony Carlin in connection with the fatal stabbing of a transient outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Santa Ana, according to a City News Service report. The victim, identified as Noah William Ewing, was also 43.
SPORTS
• Columnist Eric Sondheimer offers up the L.A. Times’ top 25 boys’ basketball rankings for the Southland after Week 7. Orange County teams making the list include JSerra (ranked No. 6), Rancho Margarita (8), Mater Dei (14), Anaheim Canyon (15) and La Habra (17). Ranked No. 1 this week is Eastvale High in north Riverside County.
• Now that the season for fall prep sports is behind us, sports reporters Andrew Turner and Matt Szabo have made their picks for their traditional “Daily Pilot Dream Teams,” each comprised of a given sport’s local high school player of the year and other outstanding athletes from the coastal O.C. cities of Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Costa Mesa and Fountain Valley. They also give a nod to the coach of the year. So far, they’ve named dream teams for boys’ cross-country, boys’ water polo and girls’ volleyball. Turner and Szabo tell me their next installment will put the spotlight on football.
LIFE & LEISURE
• For a feature story that was published over the weekend, my Daily Pilot colleague Sara Cardine interviewed Costa Mesa resident Jason Wallis, 53, who decided last summer to learn to speak Spanish by the end of 2024. Wallis wanted to master the language so he could converse in it with his 88-year-old father when he and his family visited the patriarch at his home in New Zealand over the holidays. His dedication to his lessons impressed his teacher, Nadia Flores. “He’s so determined and motivated,” Flores told Cardine. “He’d meet me once a week and then do five hours on his own studying Spanish through YouTube videos. It’s kind of been like this dream, this goal he came up with — that’s so cool.” Wallis says he now has about an 80% grasp on the conversational Spanish and that during the recent trip to Auckland he and his dad were able to communicate on a whole new level.
CALENDAR THIS
• The largest Lego fan event in California, the OC Brick Convention returns to the OC Fair & Events Center in Costa Mesa this Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are priced at $14.99 online and $20 at the door. Parking is $12. Two sessions are scheduled each day, the first from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and the second from 2 to 5 p.m. Both sessions on both days offer the same exhibits and activities. A portion of the proceeds will go to Creations for Charity, an online-based nonprofit that buys new Lego sets for underprivileged children around the world.
• Saturday, Jan. 18 is the last day to view “End of the Range: Charlotte Skinner in the Eastern Sierra” at UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art. Skinner lived from 1879 to 1963 and was especially well known for her landscapes. The exhibit features 31 of the artist’s works — paintings, drawings and photos. Langson IMCA, temporarily located at 18881 Von Karman Ave., Suite 100, will host a related Gallery Talk with UC Irvine earth system science professor Julie Ferguson and anthropology professor Valerie A. Olson on Jan. 11.
Until next Wednesday,
Carol
KEEP IN TOUCH
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