Mason

Did President Jimmy Carter ever visit La Grande?

No, Carter, who turned 99 on Sunday, Oct. 1, is not believed to have ever visited La Grande.

However, the former president’s sister-in-law, Sybil Carter, the wife of Carter’s brother, Billy, spoke at Eastern Oregon University on Nov. 14, 1984.

She appeared with representatives of Union Pacific Railroad to promote the drug and alcohol program Operation Red Block. During her presentation, Carter discussed the alcohol problems that her husband had dealt with.

Billy Carter was one of the best known brothers of a U.S. president in the past 40 years. He was so popular and colorful that a brewing company in Louisville, Kentucky, put out an alcoholic beverage, “Billy Beer,” in 1977, that Carter promoted — his signature was on its cans. The beer was produced through 1978.

Sybil Carter, speaking in the Hoke Union Building, said her husband’s drinking problem got worse after Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 and he had to take a greater role in running his family’s peanut farm.

“I don’t know whether it was the added responsibility of running the peanut business in Jimmy’s absence or the pressure of having a brother who was president,” she said in a story about her talk in the Thursday, Nov. 15, 1984, edition of The Observer.

Sybil Carter said she was determined to support her husband despite his issues with alcohol.

“I was afraid if I left, I’d miss something. Living with Billy was exciting. And besides, I couldn’t give up on him,” she said.

Billy Carter died in 1988 of cancer at age 51.

Joan Mondale, the wife of former vice president Walter Mondale, is a second person with a link to the Carter administration who appeared in La Grande. Mondale spoke at Eastern Oregon University on Oct. 9, 1992, for the Oregon Art Education Conference.

“If a nation believes that art is not important, it becomes a nation that produces unimportant art,” Mondale said.

Such nations, she added, rarely achieve success.

Mondale also spoke in support of the National Endowment for the Arts and against a proposal to cut its funding.

Joan Mondale died in 2014, and Walter Mondale, who served as vice president from 1977-1981, died in 2021.