The nation is still mourning the loss of late President Jimmy Carter, who died in late December at the age of 100. Now, one Sitkan who has a special connection with the former president is organizing a tribute in his memory.
In 1990, Debbie Miller had written her first book, Midnight Wilderness, about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She got a call from a producer in Atlanta who was working on a documentary about President Carter.
“He said, ‘Hi, you know, we’re doing this documentary on President Carter, and he’s read your book, and he would like to meet you when we come to Alaska.’ So I was in disbelief,” Miller said.
“And more than that, they wanted to meet me in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, because that was a place that he had never visited, that he always wanted to to see the caribou and the beauty and magnificence of that area.”
It turned out, Miller was already planning a camping trip to the wildlife refuge with her two daughters and sisters that summer, so they arranged a plan to meet. Miller said the day of the visit, they weren’t sure if Carter would show up, thinking weather or the Secret Service would change the president’s plans.
“But there’s the morning when I’ve got my little air-to-ground radio, and here comes the helicopter,” Miller said. “I was nervous because we were almost out of food. We’d been camping for 10 days, and I was worried I didn’t have anything to serve President Carter and Roselyn Carter, and they brought a whole cooler of really good country fried chicken and fresh fruit.”
Miller said they spent the day on the lake, fly-fishing, hiking, and bird watching. Her four-year-old daughter even “taught” President Carter how to fish with her Mickey Mouse fishing pole.
Miller said Alaska was important to Carter, and when they were together in the arctic, he told her that signing the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980 was the domestic policy highlight of his administration. ANILCA established sweeping conservation areas in Alaska, doubling the size of Alaska’s national parks and refuges, and brought further protections for subsistence of fish and wildlife in rural areas.
“This was a big deal. And Cecil Andrus, his Secretary of Interior, he would bring topographical maps into the Oval Office, and they would get on their hands and knees, and he learned all the boundary lines and the rivers and the mountains,” Miller said. “He longed to come up here and to see these areas himself, which he did.”
Miller is collecting Sitkans’ condolences and memories of President Carter as part of a larger national project. The book will be available to sign at the Sitka Public Library now until Tuesday, February 4. Miller then plans to send the book to the Carter Center in Atlanta.
