CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) – President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at age 100, made one of his first presidential visits to Charleston, West Virginia, in March 1977.
WSAZ’s archive footage shows a huge crowd was on hand to greet the nation’s 39th president.
“I’m from West Virginia, and I think it’s wonderful that he’s coming here,” one spectator said at the time.
President Carter was in Charleston at the time for a panel discussion and questions on energy. One of the participants was then Charleston Mayor John Hutchinson.
The mayor’s son, John Hutchinson Jr., told WSAZ Monday that his father and President Carter would have a special relationship.
“He would often say that President Carter was the only president that knew him by his first name — would call him John — would call him on the phone and say, ‘Hey, John,” his son recalled. “They were close.”
A year later, President Carter returned to Charleston in May 1978. The purpose was to fundraise for then U.S. Sen. Jennings Randolph and announce the establishment of the President’s Commission on the Coal Industry.
Mayor Hutchinson’s son recalls riding with his father to greet the president. This week, he holds that memory, an autographed Oval Office photo and his father’s stories a bit closer.
This one involved a message from his father’s secretary early one morning at City Hall saying, “‘Mayor, the president is on the phone for you,’ and Dad said, ‘The president of what?’ And she’s like, ‘It’s the President of the United States — President Carter needs to speak to you.’ So, he always found that to be a very humorous, fun story to tell,” Hutchinson Jr. recalled.
President Carter would return to West Virginia months later for the Forest Festival in Elkins in October 1978 and in October 1980 for a rally at Tri-State Airport in Wayne County. He would lose to Ronald Regan days later.
After leaving the White House, President Carter addressed a crowd in 1985 at West Virginia Wesleyan in Buckhannon.
As for former Charleston Mayor Hutchinson, he passed in May 2024 at 89.
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