Virginia and the country are remembering President Jimmy Carter. He died Sunday at age 100.
One of his last public appearances in Virginia came in 2018 when he spoke at Liberty University’s graduation.
Carter reminded graduates that they now had immense freedom in their lives.
"Every one of us decides this is the kind of person I choose to be. We decide whether we will tell the truth or benefit from telling lies," Carter said. "We’re the ones to decide do I hate or am I filled with love?
Carter encouraged students to stay involved in their faith and in service organizations like Habitat for Humanity. He also decried wealth inequality and discrimination against women and girls.
Carter joked that he received a lot of letters from students of the famously conservative Christian school when he was President, most of them critical. But they dropped off after he lost his re-election bid in 1980.
Virginia did not go Carter's way four years earlier either, when he won the White House.
Jimmy Carter swept the solid south in 1976 with one exception— Virginia— which went for incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford.
Here's how Howard K. Smith made the call on network television: "ABC News projects that President Ford has taken Virginia and its 12 electoral votes. This comes as no surprise because in an early October Richmond Times-Dispatch poll, Ford led seven percent. Virginia to Ford."
Virginia may have gone to Ford, but John Milliken at George Mason University's Schar School says Jimmy Carter carried the parts of Virginia that were culturally Southern— places like Martinsville, Patrick County and Henry County.
"Northern Virginia was suspicious of Carter because he was an outsider, because he was making noises about being skeptical of big government," Milliken said. "And Northern Virginia in those days was big government."
Ford won Fairfax County and most of Northern Virginia, robbing the Carter campaign of a clean sweep of the not-totally-solid South.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
