{"id":30381,"date":"2023-02-21T20:10:56","date_gmt":"2023-02-22T01:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=30381"},"modified":"2023-02-21T20:11:01","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T01:11:01","slug":"looking-back-at-president-carters-1980-campaign-stop-in-lakeland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/02\/21\/looking-back-at-president-carters-1980-campaign-stop-in-lakeland\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking back at President Carter\u2019s 1980 campaign stop in Lakeland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

President Jimmy Carter, the former Georgia peanut farmer and 39th President of the United States, has entered hospice care, according to the Carter Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAfter a series of short hospital stays, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter today decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention,\u201d the statement reads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the nation reflects on one of its former leaders, we look back at his visit to Lakeland all the way back in 1980.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Daily Diary of President Jimmy Carter from October 31, 1980<\/a>, shows him leaving the South Carolina Governor\u2019s mansion at 7:51 a.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He lands at Lakeland Municipal Airport at 11:03 a.m. where he is greeted by Lakeland Mayor Carrie Oldham, the first Black female mayor in Polk County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They then arrive at Lakeland Civic Center, which is now known as the RP Funding Center, for a Carter\/Mondale re-election campaign rally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He is greeted by Donna Bollinger, according to the records, who is now Donna Dowless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a special and wonderful day,\u201d she told us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His visit to Lakeland could have ended in tragedy if it were not for the help of Lakeland police officer Edgar Pickett Jr. who, according to the Lakeland Public Library, worked with the FBI to identify a local suspect in a threat to assassinate Carter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1:38 p.m. that day, Air Force One took off to Memphis and soon after, following defeat, President Carter\u2019s post-political career began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That same year, President Carter gifted one of his golden peanuts to Captain Mary Pruitt, a Lakeland native who served as White House Social Aide in the Carter administration, escorting many of his visitors of State, including the Pope. Capt. Pruitt, who served in the U.S. Air Force for 27 years, passed away last year.<\/p>\n\n\n

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In 1984, President Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter first volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and they would continue to do well into their 90s until 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis President\u2019s Day we want to highlight President and Mrs. Carter\u2019s work with Habitat for Humanity. Each year until 2020, the Carters volunteered with Habitat alongside more than 104,000 volunteers across the U.S. and in 14 countries to build, renovate and repair 4,390 Habitat homes,\u201d wrote Habitat for Humanity of Hillsborough County Florida, Inc. on Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of us at Habitat for Humanity are lifting up President and Mrs. Carter in prayer as he enters hospice care. We pray for his comfort and for their peace, and that the Carter family experiences the joy of their relationships with each other and with God in this time,\u201d wrote Habitat for Humanity International CEO Jonathan Reckford.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Jimmy Carter, the former Georgia peanut farmer and 39th President of the United States, has entered hospice care, according to the Carter Center. \u201cAfter a series of short hospital… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[4596],"class_list":["post-30381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-looking-back-at-president-carters-1980-campaign-stop-in-lakeland"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}