Ruminato

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That Time Jimmy Carter Took a Dive Into a Nuclear Bog

And he lived 100 years to tell about it

Charles Bastille
Ruminato
Published in
4 min readDec 30, 2024

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Long before Canada became The Great White North Satan and enemy of the United States, Jimmy Carter saved one of their nuke plants.

Hero in a superman type cape, back facing us, scanning the horizon
Image licensed from Adobe Stock; duotone added by author because I like duotones

When James Earl Carter Jr. graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946, he was assigned to the USS Wyoming. The USS Wyoming was the Navy’s oldest ship, having been commissioned in 1912. You could hear every piece of metal grind as it reluctantly plowed through the ocean.

Carter had been the victim of that great American tradition: The luck of the draw. Midshipmen graduating from the Naval Academy in those days, even those like Carter who graduated with distinction, were handed naval assignments randomly.

Before he jumped onto his new, but old, boat, he asked his high school sweetheart, Rosalynn Smith, to marry him. When asked by a television interviewer much later in life what his greatest life moment was, Carter wouldn’t bite when the interviewer suggested maybe it was the Camp David Middle East Accords or some other accomplishment, such as Habitat for Humanity or another in his vast catalog of social activism. Instead, he said it was when Rosalynn said yes.

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Charles Bastille
Charles Bastille

Written by Charles Bastille

Author of MagicLand & Psalm of Vampires. Join me on my Substack at https://www.ruminato.com/. All stories © 2020-24 by Charles Bastille

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