All these years later, something about his interaction with the late U.S. President Jimmy Carter at a 10K road race in Maryland back in September 1979, left an uneasy feeling with Louisville’s Bruce Kirschner. Carter, a recreational runner who sometimes trained on roads in nearby Camp David, was among the roughly 980 runners racing the Catoctin Mountain Park Run.

More than 40 years after the race, in 2022, Kirschner sent Carter an apology for something he said to the president, who collapsed near the four-mile mark of the hilly race. He died last month at age 100; his state funeral was last week.

Carter was a self-described running “evangelist,” who earned a letter in cross country at the U.S. Naval Academy. During the formative years of the Running Boom — spurred by publication of Bill Bowerman’s 1966 book “Jogging,” and Frank Shorter’s 1972 Olympic marathon gold medal — Carter became one of the many nationwide who took up jogging.

Carter called running “one of the high points of my day,” in an interview with the New York Times, saying he tried to run between three and seven miles daily. “I start looking forward to it almost from the minute I get up. If I don’t run, I don’t feel exactly right. I carry a watch, and I can click off a mile in six and a half minutes when I really turn it on.”

That would have been too fast a pace at the Catoctin Run. According to race reports, Carter faltered going up a hill while running near an eight-minute mile pace. Hey, we’ve all gone out too fast in a race, but few of us have the whole world watching.

Kirschner, then 26 and an intern at Carter’s new Presidential Management Program at the Department of Energy, and his wife, Janet Lowe, were among the runners. According to Kirschner, the race course was “brutally hilly,” one of the most challenging races he has ever run. Lowe finished in 50:30 and was running near Carter when she suddenly saw his legs buckle, his face go pale.

“I saw the president,” Lowe told her husband at the finish. “His face was white and his mouth was hanging open. Then he staggered and collapsed,” before being taken off the course in a golf cart.

But Carter bounced back, returning “fresh as a daisy in a dapper blue warm-up suit,” for the awards ceremony, where he handed Boulder’s Herb Lindsay his winner’s award, saying “I thought I was going to get you.”

Afterwards, as the runners dispersed, Kirschner approached Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, who were getting into the limo to return to Camp David.

“How is the president doing?” Kirschner asked Rosalynn, after first “sauntering” past a Secret Service agent, who eyed him warily.

“Jimmy is doing just fine,” Mrs. Carter replied. Kirschner then addressed Carter.

“Mr. President, when do you plan to run your first marathon?”

Carter “glanced over at me with a bit of an incredulous look, as if my question wasn’t really a serious one in light of events earlier in the day,” Kirschner recounted, before the President “cheerily” responded, “I have no plans right now.”

What bothered Kirschner all these years was the thought that Carter might have taken his question as a jab, at his dropping out of the 10K. Thus, the apology letter, all those years later. Kirschner writes, “I surely wasn’t poking fun at your misfortune during the race that morning. It really was not intended to be in jest at your expense. I sincerely hoped that you had an interest in running a marathon one day soon. I have since regretted many times what I stated to you that day. Please forgive my naïve transgression and accept my respectful apology.”

Added Kirschner in the letter, “I’ve been so impressed with you and Rosalynn’s contributions to the world since you left The White House. You made a deliberate choice to continue to serve the world as a true humanitarian. You are a role model for the rest of us mortals. Keep up the good work.”

Carter did much good work in his long and storied life. One decision he regretted, however, was boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. Boulder marathoner Benji Durden was one of those denied a chance to earn a potential life-changing Olympic medal. A recent Associated Press story quotes Carter telling a wrestler upon finding out he lost a chance to compete in Moscow, “Oh, that was a bad decision. I’m sorry.”

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