PROVIDENCE – On Wednesday, Jan. 9, the United States will celebrate a national day of mourning to celebrate the legacy of President Jimmy Carter, who passed away at 100 years of age.

There is irony that flags will be flown at half-mast to honor President Carter, two weeks before former President Trump is inaugurated as the next President.

If President Carter was someone who, in a Playboy interview, once admitted that he had “lust in his heart” but never acted upon it, former President Trump was the polar opposite – someone convicted of sexual assault, who proudly boasted about his lust and his desire to “grab women by the pussy.”

How long ago did President Jimmy Carter serve? He was elected in 1976, defeating President Gerald Ford. Then President Carter was defeated in 1980 by President Ronald Reagan, making President Carter a one-term President. How long ago was that, in terms of political reporting?

A long time gone.  
Reporting on politics has always been about telling the stories about who gets what, when, and how – for how much?

As a political reporter who came of age in the 1970s, I covered the 1972 Democratic National Convention [with a subsequent story, “Notes on my First Convention,” published in Seventeen Magazine], the Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign of Michael Dukakis in 1974 [with the story, “Would you trust this man from Boston?” published in The Valley Advocate], and the short-lived Presidential campaign of Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp in 1976 [“What makes Milton run? Certainly not voters,” The New Paper].

In October of 1976, I covered the Presidential debate between President Gerald Ford and then Democratic Candidate Jimmy Carter took place in Philadelphia, the debate made memorable by the glitch in the sound system that left the two candidates at the podium, smiling, with no way to communicate.

In January of 1977, I covered the Presidential inauguration of President Carter. Here is my story, “I heard America singing,” published on Feb. 2, 1977, in The Valley Advocate, an alternative newsweekly in Amherst, Mass., where I served as Managing Editor. I was 24 years old when I wrote the story.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Aretha Franklin, the first lady of song, ended a four-hour gala celebration of the arts at the Kennedy Center on Inauguration Eve by singing “God Bless America” a capella. Her satin voice seemed to capture the emotional aura surrounding Jimmy Carter’s inauguration as the 39th President, epitomizing that yearning populist spirit seeking to restore faith in our country’s myth.

If Gerald Ford had been elected President in 1976, Aretha Franklin would never have sung “God Bless America” for the final benediction of the Inaugural Eve ceremonies. Instead, Kate Smith would have lumbered onto the stage and belted out her classic, much as if it were another Philadelphia Flyers game.

The gap in consciousness between Kate Smith and Aretha Franklin best defines the change in spirit between administrations.

The most memorable events of the inauguration – the First Family’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue during the parade, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., leading a prayer meeting at the Lincoln Memorial where his son once thundered, “I have a dream…” and the humble Inaugural address which put forth the elimination of all nuclear weapons as a primary goal – reflected Carter’s acceptance of political and cultural changes that the nation had undergone during the past decade, changes he was not threatened by.

Heart of darkness?    
Washington, District of Columbia, might well be the white sepulchral city of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a city gleaming in white that is built upon the blackness of its inhabitants. There are two separate and unequal Washingtons: mythical Washington, a magical 20-square block configuration of pompous Greco-Roman monuments memorializing our great leaders; and the city of Washington, mostly black, very poor, severely crime-ridden, and without voting rights in Congress.

Mythical Washington still views itself as the center of the Universe; it has not gone through its Copernican revolution. The city of Washington, known as Chocolate City, is also referred to as the last colony, and its inhabitants would not be visible in the Inaugural festivities. Most tourists and pilgrims would see them only as taxi drivers and porters and hot-dog vendors.

Jimmy Carter, who comes from the distant solar system of Plains, Georgia, may change all this. His daughter, Amy, will be attending a public grammar school just blocks from the White House, shattering the conventional separatism between the city and the White House.

So mythical Washington, which thrives on ritual, pomp and circumstance, filled up with pilgrims and politicians busy making arrangements for party dresses and tickets to the swearing-in ceremonies. Status is no small item in the capital, and much of Wednesday was consumed by collecting credentials and attending receptions and avoiding large traffic jams.

Wednesday night’s ceremonies at the Kennedy Center were full of warmth and good humor. American government seems to have found it’s way out of its cultural wilderness after 15 years in the desert. Bob Hope was not there telling dated jokes, fresh from his latest adventure entertaining the fighting men in Vietnam. And John Wayne showed up simply as a member of the loyal opposition, an aging cowboy finally put out to pasture.

No, this time the spotlight fell on Alvin Ailey, Redd Fox, Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Leonard Bernstein, Beverly Sills, Freddie Prinze, James Dickey, and the munificent Aretha. Was that really John Lennon, the John Lennon of Beatles fame sitting in the audience?

An auspicious morning.  
The Inaugural morning dawned with crisp, clear skies. On days like this the white buildings along Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues gleam with that special magic, and it’s easy to believe in the words of Jefferson and Madison again. Hordes of people began to descend upon the Capitol to get a glimpse of the swearing-in ceremony.

Like so many public spectacles these days, the best seat in the house was your own living room watching the proceedings on a color television. But you weren’t going to convince the hundreds of thousands of people who vainly waved their standing-room tickets in the air trying to fight their way through the throng. Security was tight, and people were being admitted onto the Capitol grounds single-file. Do you know how difficult it is to have that many people move single-file past security guards?

Red-beret soldiers maintained at-rest positions all around the Capitol, and tall uniformed figures with field glasses manned the white rooftop, searching the crowd for potential trouble. But none was forthcoming, and the worst injury was getting caught in the crush, jostled, elbowed, kneed, and picked off your feet by the swell of the crowd. This reporter managed to get inside the gate by grabbing the belt of an NBC cameraman from Los Angeles as he literally pushed and shoved his way through.

People left towards the end of the speech to avoid the crush again. Lines along the parade were already 15 people deep when the ceremonies ended. The longest lines were in front of the hot-dog vendors, who were charging 65 cents per dog, and many tourists and pilgrims waited 45 minutes just to get such a savory treat.

Hubert leads the parade    
Hubert Humphrey was the official parade leader, and his limousine led the new cabinet members past the throngs as loudspeakers along Pennsylvania Avenue announced their coming and going. People hung out windows and sat in trees and kids sat on their parent’s shoulders to get a better view.

As former President Ford lifted off from the Capitol in the jet helicopter, the loudspeakers along the parade route asked the people to wave good-bye to the “brave” President. The person standing next to this reporter, [perhaps] imitating former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, gave Ford the finger.

And then the word spread like brush fire – the President, his wife and Amy were walking. It was cause to rub one’s eyes in wonderment. The only people who didn’t like the walk were the Secret Service and the news media. From the vantage point in the National Press Club, it appeared that Walter Cronkite got completely flustered and could do nothing but spoil the moment, with non-stop rambling. Only Sam Donaldson on ABC, when asked for commentary on the walk, refused to say anything, allowing the moment to speak for itself.

As the parade turned up 15th Street and around the Treasury, I found my way to a private party of local artisans who were occupying a second-floor loft across from the Treasury. Everyone was busy smoking marijuana and drinking Jim Beam and watching the parade down below them. It was hard to remember a recent inauguration when the young artists and writers in Washington had gathered to celebrate an inauguration, much less commemorate the festivities with huge cigar-like joints, 30 feet from the marching bands and blaring trumpets.

The parties continued long into the night. The official Inaugural parties at seven different locations were wall-to-wall people affairs. Getting a drink was a shoving match, and dancing meant mostly bumping shoulders. The party this reporter attended at Union Station had more than 8,000 people jammed into the concourse, and the mass of people made it impossible to even hear Mercer Ellington’s band. An occasional bass line did slip through the crowd. Like weddings, the President and his wife came, said a quick hello and good-bye to the crowd, and left to start their honeymoon. The partygoers returned to their ritual of alcohol.

Carter’s first act the next morning as President was to declare an unconditional pardon for all draft resisters from the Vietnam War. His second was to urge everyone to turn their heat down to 65 degrees to avert a natural gas crisis in the Midwest. It’s just possible that Carter will be that same dynamic force which Franklin Delano Roosevelt was, transforming the government from inaction into a dynamic force again.

For when Aretha Franklin sang “God Bless America,” this reporter felt he could join her in singing, and perhaps be made to believe again in the unfulfilled promises of this country’s dream.

The cynical and the intellectual may disparage such dreams as 18^th-century idealism, but those myths of freedom and equality are what little threads we have to live by, and they are not so bad. So this reporter discovered he could sing, in public, perhaps off-key, with a throaty “God Bless America.”

I heard America singing.