Former President Jimmy Carter met with Georgia Tech basketball coach Josh Pastner and athletic director Todd Stansbury on Thursday at the Carter Center. The funny thing is, the gathering evidently was initiated by Carter.
“You know, he’s a big Tech fan,” Stansbury said.
Carter would have reason to pull for the Yellow Jackets. He attended Tech for one year, studying math to qualify for the U.S. Naval Academy. He has said that it was the most difficult of the four colleges that he attended. He earned an honorary degree from Tech in 1979. After he and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter received the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage from the institute in February, Carter said that “In every respect my heart is with Georgia Tech.”
The visit lasted about 30 or 40 minutes. Stansbury described it as “phenomenal” and said that Carter, who played basketball at Plains High, knew plenty about Pastner’s team.
“He’s totally on it as far as what’s going on,” Stansbury said. “So just really interesting because we’re trying to tell him what’s going on, and he goes, ‘Oh, I know that. I’ve read about it.’”
According to Pastner, Carter had wanted to set up a meeting with him after his hire last year, but their schedules couldn’t align. Hugh Carter Jr., the son of the former president’s late cousin and a Tech grad, made the connection with Stansbury and Pastner through Jack Thompson, a senior associate athletic director.
Pastner was overwhelmed by the company.
“It was really just fascinating sitting there, knowing this guy, he was the leader of the free world,” Pastner said. “He was the most powerful man in the world at one time.”
Pastner’s curiosity led him elsewhere in Carter’s office.
“He had a bunch of Secret Service still on his detail, around the clock, 24/7,” he said. “Those guys, there was no messing around with those guys. I wanted to ask them questions. They were like, ‘Hey, keep moving on.’”
Pastner said that Carter followed the team this past season as the Jackets surpassed all expectations. He also said that Carter asked him how the team would fare this coming season.
“I said, ‘Mr. President, we’re not out of the woods yet,’” Pastner said. “’We still have no margin for error. We still have a long way to go.’”
Upon being challenged, Pastner insisted that he indeed gave the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize his well-worn talking points.
“I was waiting for him to say, ‘You should be a politician,’” Pastner said.
