Good evening. My name is Josh Carter, and I am Jimmy Carter’s grandson. I am honored to be here to accept the Distinguished Submariner Award on my grandfather’s behalf.

Jimmy Carter grew up in a small farming community called Archery, Georgia. His father owned the general store, and everybody he knew worked on the same land. He didn’t have electricity, and he preferred to plow the fields in his bare feet. When the peanut crop finally came in, he would walk down the train tracks to the trading metropolis of Plains, and he would sell peanuts for a nickel a bag.

But his favorite stop in Plains was the post office, where he eagerly awaited any letter from his favorite uncle, Tom Gordy. Tom was a Lieutenant in the Navy, operating in the Pacific. And while Jimmy Carter’s world was only as big as where he could walk, Tom would send my grandfather letters from exotic locations like Australia, Japan, China, and the Philippines.

On December 8, 1941, my grandfather received one of his prized letters from Tom, who wrote to tell Jimmy about his new station in Guam. However, on the very same day that the letter arrived, Japan captured Guam, and with it, Lieutenant Gordy.

Tom’s capture filled my grandfather with a singular purpose of becoming an officer in the navy. He joined the Navy ROTC program at Georgia Tech – and, using his words – he left Tech for an easier school and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946. He was in Annapolis when President Truman ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s hard to imagine more formative years for a Midshipman to start his career.

While my grandfather was at Annapolis, he thought he wanted to be a navy airman. But when he graduated and pulled lots for his first duty station, he drew near the bottom. His first post was as the Electronics Officer on USS WYOMING (BB 32), which was the oldest battleship in the fleet. Its fighting days were over, but the navy used WYOMING as a test bed. However, the ancient ship leaked so much oil that it was never allowed in port. As a newlywed new graduate, Jimmy Carter had a rough time stuck on a hulked vessel, getting electrocuted installing prototype radar systems. He summarized his feelings about the navy in black marker over his bunk. He wrote, “So what?”

Mercifully, the navy retired the WYOMING and replaced it with USS MISSISSIPPI (BB 41). The entire crew switched over and the mission continued. Now on a sea-worthy vessel, Electronics Officer LT Jimmy Carter found himself in charge of our newest technology in radar, communications, LORAN, fire control, and new weapons systems. He was on the cutting edge, and he knew it, and he was hooked.

Most technological advances were in the Submarine Force, so he applied for submarine school and was accepted. His first submarine was USS POMFRET (SS 391), a Balao-class submarine that tried to kill him multiple times. It did not work, and current reports are that my 100-year-old grandfather is indestructible.

His first near-death experience happened one night while POMFRET was traveling between Hawaii and China. A storm started brewing and churning up rolling waves. My grandfather was the Electronics Officer, and he was up monitoring the boat, making sure the batteries were charging, and all the systems online. However, the combination of rolling waves, diesel fuel fumes, and cigarette smoke sent my grandfather to the top deck to throw up outside.

But about two in the morning, in the pitch-black night in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, an enormous wave came over the bow of the submarine, picked up my grandfather, and threw him off the deck. He was standing on deck feeling sick in one moment, and in the next, the submarine was gone. He was flailing in the water. The boat was moving at 20 knots. He would have been impossible to find. In a miracle, the wave crashed his body into the aft 5-inch gun, and he clung to it for dear life. He fumbled his way to the hatch and decided he’d spend the rest of the evening throwing up inside the sub. The next morning, he wrote a report to his commanding officer, simply stating that he had been swept from the deck, landed on the afterdeck, and recovered without injury. But my grandfather knew that if the boat wasn’t headed directly into the storm, if the wave had pushed him just a couple of feet to the left or right, he would have been lost. He was shaken, and his personal takeaway was that life was precious and fragile. He internalized the gravity of his personal commitment to our nation.

His last brush with death from POMFRET came of the final segment of one of his 75-day tours. The crew left Puget Sound for Hawaii. When the captain ordered their first dive, the starboard vents opened properly and air escaped from the ballast tanks. But every vent valve on the port side stayed shut. The boat began to roll to starboard as the dive planes drove the submarine downward. The officers and crew furiously diagnosed the problem, and they blew the ballast tanks only moments away from POMFRET capsizing. That was the closest my grandfather ever came to losing the boat and crew. This experience, more than anything, crystallized my grandfather’s duty to his crew as a naval officer, and he spent the rest of his time on POMFRET redoubling his efforts to learn every knob, every valve, every sensor, every pipe, and every system on his submarine.
His superiors observed his mastery of POMFRET and selected him as the Engineering Officer — the only officer — to oversee the construction of the navy’s first snorkel-design submarine, the K-1. “KILLER 1” was rigged for silent operation to sneak up on Soviet ships and installations, and it had the most advanced sonar system in the American fleet. My grandfather spent most of his time with the sonar specialists, listening to the distinctive propeller noises of different ships, but he was also fascinated with the sounds of the ocean, especially the remarkable calls of whales. He worked on the boat for two years until he heard about a top-secret submarine program from Admiral Hyman Rickover. What happened next was so foundational that I’ll read directly from my grandfather’s diary:

He always looked right into my eyes, and he never smiled. I was saturated with cold sweat.

Finally, he asked me a question, and I thought I could redeem myself. He said, “How did you stand in your class at the Naval Academy?” Since I had completed my sophomore year at Georgia Tech before entering Annapolis as a plebe, I had done very well, and swelled my chest with pride and answered, “Sir, I stood 59th in a class of 820!” I sat back and waited for the congratulations — which never came. Instead came this question: “Did you do your best?” I started to say, “Yes, sir”. But I remembered who this was, and recalled several of the many times at the Academy when I could have learned more about our allies, our enemies, weapons, strategy, and so forth. I was just human. I finally gulped and said, “No, sir. I didn’t always do my best.”

He asked me one final question: “Why not?” He looked at me for a long time, and then turned his chair around to end the interview. I sat there for a while, shaken, and then slowly left the room.

He went home and told his wife Rosalynn that he did poorly, and he wasn’t going to get the job. Of course, as you all know, he did get the job. Admiral Rickover was trying out two nuclear powerplant designs — a water-cooled design and a sodium-cooled design. My grandfather was on the sodium-cooled USS SEAWOLF (SSN 575). But more important than the submarine was my grandfather’s relationship with Admiral Rickover. He was controversial. He was abrasive. He was quick to correct, he expected excellence, and he did not give out accolades. But Admiral Rickover never once asked my grandfather or any other officer to do a job that he wouldn’t do himself, and he never asked any subordinate to work harder than he did. Admiral Rickover strived to master the most complex problems that the United States Navy had ever tackled, and it was from Rickover’s total devotion to that mastery that my grandfather learned that the most complex problems in the world could be solved by dedication, competency, expertise, and a lot of hard work.

In short, Admiral Rickover demanded, and received, his best.

In 2005, my wife Sarah and I were with my grandfather at the commissioning of SSN 23, and he reflected on his past achievements. He had been elected Governor of the state of Georgia. He had been President of the United States. He had received the Nobel Peace Prize. But he said the naming of SSN 23 as the USS JIMMY CARTER was the greatest honor of his life.

My grandfather, a man who grew up in a house without electricity, helped Admiral Rickover build our nuclear navy. But the navy instilled the discipline, leadership, command, responsibility, and service that build Jimmy Carter the man. So, on behalf of my grandfather, thank you for this great honor.