Jimmy Carter held 5-year-old Maura Sammon in his arms and changed her life.
The weirdest things can alter lives in the strangest places.
The event that eventually oriented the life of a little girl from Duryea occurred April 22, 1976, at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport. Sammon's grandparents, Jack and Kathryn Sammon, had her tag along to see a former peanut farmer.
By then, Carter, was also a former Georgia governor running for president, the real reason the Sammons thought this ranked as a great time to introduce their granddaughter to politics.
Carter landed at the airport to campaign with the Pennsylvania primary election only five days away and the Democratic nomination in the balance. After a news conference, he mingled with supporters and did what politicians often do when they see a child.
“I was about five years old, and they brought me down, and he did the typical pick-up-the-kid-kissing-babies thing,” Sammon said Monday, a day after Carter died at age 100. “And I'm a talker. I'm quite a talker. And so, I started talking to him, and we had a pretty long conversation.”
Her grandparents told her later what she asked.
“I was told that I asked him why my grandparents should vote for him, and he told me about wanting to help people like them who worked hard for their families,” Sammon said.
A Scranton Tribune photographer snapped a picture of their encounter.
“The AP (the Associated Press) picked up the photograph, and I was on the front page of every major newspaper across the country,” Sammon said.
Carter’s campaign even turned the photo into a campaign poster. “The Kids Trust ... Jimmy Carter,” said the caption.
Five days later, Carter won the Pennsylvania primary, all but clinching the Democratic nomination. In November, he won the presidency, but he couldn’t get re-elected four years later.
Funny story about that photo. Grandma Sammon got a hold of a copy, mailed it to the White House asking for an autograph and got a reply saying the president “doesn't have time for these trivial matters.”
“That did not sit particularly well with my grandmother,” Sammon said.
Kathryn Sammon found out where Jimmy Carter’s mom, Lillian Carter, lived. She mailed her a stern letter.
“My grandmother actually wrote a nastygram to Miss Lillian, saying, ‘I can't believe you raised your son like this,’” Sammon said. “That’s Kathryn."
“That’s Kathryn.”
Lillian Carter actually wrote back, promised to get that photo autographed and came through. Kathryn and Lillian became pen pals for a while. When Lillian Carter campaigned at the airport for her son’s re-election in 1980, she arranged for the Sammons, including Maura, to lunch with her at the airport restaurant.
After his re-election loss, Maura kept on keeping track of Jimmy Carter. She read about Carter in newspapers and magazines and watched him on television.
Only the federal government had the internet back then.
Eventually, Maura Sammon graduated from Pittston Area High School and Temple University and then Temple’s medical school.
As she studied for life, Carter, a devout Christian, turned to helping humanity. He built homes, oversaw elections in fledgling democracies, organized campaigns against third-world disease, interceded in longstanding international conflicts and opened the Carter Center, dedicated to similar efforts.
Funny story about the Carter Center.
Jack and Elaine Sammon, Maura’s parents, visited the Carter Center in the 1990s and stumbled upon the poster, draped in red, white and blue.
“And they, of course, Jackie caused a scene,” Maura Sammon said. “And one of the directors of the Carter Center came over and he's (her father is) like, ‘That’s my daughter.’ And about two weeks later, we received a package from President Carter saying, ‘We have two copies of this poster. I have one. I felt that it was appropriate that you have the other.’ So, he sent the other.”
As her hero gained greater fame as a worldwide humanitarian and piled up points toward a Nobel Peace Prize, Maura Sammon resolved to model her life after his example. She actually ran into Carter, quite by chance, at a Borders bookstore where he was promoting a book.
They chatted briefly, and she recounted the airport meeting and the poster, and that leads to another funny story.
As an emergency room doctor, she did a residency a rotation at Emory University in Atlanta.
“This is where it gets crazy,” she said.
One day, Rosalyn Carter, the president’s wife, required emergency care. They lived in Plains, Georgia.
“And she goes, ‘Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. You're not going to believe who my doctor is.’ And she points at me,” Sammon said. “And now, meanwhile, I'm like, OK, I'm being introduced to my hero as his wife's doctor. That's really cool. She points to me. He turns me, goes, ‘Maura!’”
Carter had remembered meeting her in the bookstore.
“He was one of those people that remembered absolutely everyone he had ever met,” Sammon said.
She never saw him again in person, but they're just her brush with celebrity stories.
In the end, Jimmy Carter’s influence on Maura Sammon matters more.
Now 53, she’s Temple’s director of global health and spends a good portion of her time in other countries offering her services, usually for free.
She’s spent time in Iraq helping establish emergency medical care there. She’s worked in Cambodia and Ukraine. She ran refugee clinics in Mexico and aided Sierra Leone disaster victims.
“I'm the director of global health, which is kind of funny, because it's all Jimmy Carter,” Sammon said. “This man has influenced me more than you can possibly imagine.”
In 2021, when the Taliban took over Kabul, Afghanistan, thousands of Afghan refugees wound up in Philadelphia.
Along with Cheryl Bettigole, the commissioner for the city public health department, now a close friend, they set up an airport clinic for the refugees, knowing the health of people in war zones usually suffers.
“What we did there was beautiful. What we did there was we did culturally sensitive, compassionate, coordinated care that catered to the public good,” Sammon said.
They did it for Afghans, “who had served our country while in their country, and put themselves at great personal risk.”
“We'd make sure that when they came into our country, they felt like welcome guests,” Sammon said.
All because Jimmy Carter picked up a 5-year-old girl at another airport 45 years earlier and left an impression. As Maura Sammon learned more about him, her belief in herself grew. So did her belief that she could, “to some degree, walk in his footsteps.”
“This was just this chance encounter (that) made this kid, who was some kid from Duryea realize that she could be something that could maybe change the world and make the world a better place,” Sammon said.
