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Luzerne County historian remembers friend and President Jimmy Carter as 'genuine'

Larry Cook, left, and his wife, Diane, right, with former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter
Larry Cook
Larry Cook, left, and his wife, Diane, right, with former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter

In February 2004, Larry Cook traveled to Plains, Georgia, to meet a former president, a birthday present from his wife.

Today, a month short of 20 years since Larry and Diane Cook first chatted with Jimmy Carter in the church where he regularly taught Sunday school, they will say a final goodbye to a close friend.

The Cooks will attend Carter’s funeral in Washington, D.C., as invited guests of his family before the 39th president’s body is flown back to Plains for burial next to his wife, Rosalynn.

“You know, he’s a genuine person,” Cook said in a telephone interview Monday. “They both were. It's hard to talk about him without talking about her, because they were so much alike in that respect.”

The Carters always showed more interest in listening to whomever they spoke with than in talking about themselves, Cook said.

“One of the first things I heard him say was, you should always try to love the person that's standing in front of you,” Cook said. “And that always stuck with me, and he held to that.”

Knowing her history-buff husband’s penchant for collecting presidential memorabilia, Diane Cook knew he also badly wanted to meet a president someday.

“She heard that if you went to Plains, Georgia, you could go to church,” Cook said. “President Carter would teach Sunday school any Sunday that he was there in Plains, and ... you could attend the Sunday school lesson. You could get your picture taken. So, she surprised me in 2004 with a birthday trip.”

They sat in the front row. Carter came over, they got their picture taken together, but more importantly, “we really fell in love with Plains, Georgia.”

“It's just such a great town. The people there are really a close-knit community. There's no litter” and the people are so friendly, he said.

He loved the town so much he wrote Carter a letter telling him that and how much he appreciated the Sunday school lesson.

To his amazement, Carter wrote back.

“It was less than a week, and I got a handwritten letter from him, and he invited us to come back again,” he said. “And we actually went back a few more times and he got to recognize us. And I told him at the time that we were also from Plains, but Plains Pennsylvania, because we lived there at the time.”

As the Carters and Cooks grew more acquainted with each other and the Carters’ hometown on subsequent trips, the Carters learned the Cooks ran an auction and estate liquidation business and Larry Cook was an expert in presidential memorabilia.

A few years later, Carter wanted to raise money for Plains Better Hometown, an effort to renovate buildings in his hometown.

He called on Larry Cook to organize an auction – in-person and online - of Carter memorabilia. That happened in April 2011 in Plains Township. Carter attended a cocktail party at the Stegmaier Mansion in Wilkes-Barre later that day.

The auction included flowers that grew in Rosalynn Carter’s garden, books the president wrote and autographed, clothing Mrs. Carter wore and other memorabilia, according to media accounts.

The Carters even attended the “Plains helping Plains” auction that raised $81,000. Cook told Carter he wanted to keep helping Plains.

“So, we worked on other projects with them,” he said.

Larry Cook arranged for a local stained-glass maker, Kasmark & Marshall Stained & Leaded Glass, to fashion a 3-by-6-foot stained-glass presidential seal to sit above the entrance to the Plains Historic Inn. In November 2011, it was unveiled there.

After that, Larry Cook, knowing two other presidents spoke at the Wyoming Monument in Wyoming, invited his friend to speak there, too. The monument commemorates the 277 lives lost on July 3, 1778, during the Battle of Wyoming of the Revolutionary War.

In May 2013, Carter joined President Rutherford B. Hayes (1878) and President Theodore Roosevelt (1905) as presidents who spoke at the monument.

Carter came at his wife’s insistence. At a lunch in Plains, Cook mentioned he and Diane married at the monument.

“And I said, ‘Gee, I would love it if you would come there and give a speech, and you would be the third president to have spoken there,’” Cook said.

Carter said he had to check his schedule, but Rosalynn chimed in.

“And Rosalynn said, ‘Oh, Jimmy, we've got to do that,’” Cook said. “And he said, Well, Rose, I've got to check my schedule.’ And she said, ‘Well, I know you have a schedule, but we're going, we're going to do it. And he looks at me, and he goes, ‘Well, I guess we're coming to the Wyoming monument, and we'll set it up.”

In April 2015, Carter attended a fundraiser at the Stegmaier Mansion meant to raise money for the Plains Better Hometown program and the Carter Center, the charitable organization in Atlanta. He stayed overnight in the Cooks’ Dallas Township home that time.

It was Carter’s final visit to the Wyoming Valley and northeast Pennsylvania.

Cook, 64, said Monday he talked with Carter about visiting here again, but Carter, by then more than 90 years old, said he was cutting back on travel.

Besides becoming his friend, Carter influenced Cook’s life in another way, too.

“You know, he's responsible for me being a full-time historian,” Cook said.

About 14 years ago, the National Park Service began asking Cook to bring some of his memorabilia to the Jimmy Carter National Historic site for President’s Day weekend.

“And so I did that. And then they said, ‘Well, next time, why don't you speak about something about the memorabilia? So, I did that,” Cook said.

“Like the third year or so, President Carter asked if I would speak there on President's Day weekend.”

From there, a routine developed. He spoke on Sunday and the Carters attended. The Carters spoke on Monday and the Cooks attended.

“For the last 13, 14 years, ... I would speak on Sunday, and then the Carters would speak on Monday,” Cook said.

About four years ago, Carter wasn’t physically able to speak on President’s Day. The park service asked Cook to substitute.

“That's a real honor,” he said. “I've done that for the last, I guess, the last three years and ... will be again this year.”

About seven years into this President’s Day routine, Carter suggested Cook become a full-time historian. It happened during one of the Cooks’ Georgia visits after church.

Carter asked to speak privately.

“And so we stepped to the side, and he said, ‘I've been meaning to tell you that Rosalynn and I are very proud of what you do for history,’” Cook said. “And I said, well, thank you very much. And he said, ‘Well, frankly, we think you need to do more of it.’”

When they returned to their hotel room that night, the Cooks talked about Carter’s suggestion.

“As I said to Diane, if they're requesting that, I should do that. I think it's meant to be and I'm going to do it,” he said.

The Cooks sold their business and Larry Cook became a full-time historian. He earns money with speaking engagements and consulting. He said the Carters were delighted.

“And he said, ‘If there's ever anything that we can do to help you make sure you let us know,’” Cook said.

Cook said he never asked for help. The Cooks decided long ago they didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the friendship. He turned down friends who wanted Carter to sign something for them.

“I think that meant a lot to them,” he said. “I wouldn’t even ask him to sign things for me ... Everything that he signed for us, he said to me, ‘I want to sign that for you.’ I never asked him.”

He did ask the president for one favor.

“I said to him, ‘I’ve never interviewed anybody before and I guess if I’m going to be a full-time historian, it would be good to interview a president,’” Cook said. “And he said, ‘Well, let’s set it up.’ So, we set it up, and he was the first person I ever interviewed. And it was cool because he told me some neat stories.”

The interview took place in 2017. Cook has it stored on a thumb drive.

Each time, they saw each other after that, Carter asked how the full-time historian gig was going.

“They were thrilled when my book, “Symbols of Patriotism,” came out,” he said.

Rosalynn Carter would regularly call asking for copies for a friend or family member.

“You never get used to that when a president or first lady calls you on your cell phone,” he said.

The relationship also helped expand his memorabilia collection. Carter gave him a wooden pitchfork and a broom that he made himself. When the Carters visited in 2013, they brought “a very official-looking bag with a presidential seal on it.”

They got it at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration a few months earlier.

“Inside the bag was everything that they had gotten from President Obama's inauguration, and including their leather-bound program that only former presidents and VIPs would have gotten,” Cook said.

Carter signed the program. A few months later, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden spoke at Lackawanna College in Scranton. Cook attended, managed to get in to see Obama and told him.

Obama signed the program, too.

It’s one of his prized possessions, but the Carters gave it away because they thought he should have it.

Mostly, he said, the Carters never acted like they once lived in the White House. In a buffet line in Georgia, the ex-president insisted the Cooks get their food first.

“And he said, ‘No, you’re the guest,’” Cook said.

On the 2015 visit, when Carter stayed overnight at their home, they all sat in the kitchen eating cheese and crackers.

Carter, he said, loved Coke Zero so they had Coke Zero ready.

At the time, Carter belonged to a group that dubbed itself “the elders.” Cook said former South African President Nelson Mandela started the group, which included other foreign leaders like former Kofi Annan the former Secretary-General of the United Nations.

“They would come together and brainstorm on world problems and give their opinions or give their advice on particular things and that were happening around the world,” Cook said.

So, as they chatted about friends and family, Cook asked what Carter was up to next.

“And he's like, ‘Oh, I'm flying out ... to meet with Vladimir Putin and with the elders” Cook said. “At that moment I'm thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, you know, I just forgot for a second who I'm talking to here.’”

Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, Putin and Carter met, and Cook saw his friend on the news on TV.

Borys joins WVIA News from The Scranton Times-Tribune, where he served as an investigative reporter and covered a wide range of political stories. His work has been recognized with numerous national and state journalism awards from the Inland Press Association, Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors, Society of Professional Journalists and Pennsylvania Newsmedia Association.

You can email Borys at boryskrawczeniuk@wvia.org