DMV residents are remembering former President Jimmy Carter, including one Maryland man who has a picture worth a thousand words.
Josh Davidsburg shared a photo of himself at 2-years-old with News4. The photo shows him sitting on Carter’s lap.
“Even though I don’t remember it, it’s still like a big part of my life,” Davidsburg said.
The adorable photo printed in a local paper was snapped during a Fourth of July parade in Atlanta in 1981.
“I just kind of wandered off and wandered up to Jimmy Carter and I said, ‘uppy’ and he picked me up and put me in his lap,” Davidsburg said.
In the photo, Davidsburg has an American flag in his mouth. He says the flag came from none other than Rosalynn Carter.
The memory was so special, he made sure to immortalize it.
“My wife actually printed it out and actually got a signed copy from him,” Davidsburg said.
Davidsburg lives near Baltimore now, but was born in Georgia when his father was a reporter at a TV station in Atlanta.
More than 40 years after this photo was taken, he says the once-in-a-lifetime encounter changed his life.
“For him it was probably nothing,” Davidsburg said. “I was this little kid that kind of hobbled up to him, but it kind of helped set me on the path of where I am today.”
Like his dad, Davidburg used to be a reporter, working up and down the East Coast for about a decade before becoming a Senior Lecturer teaching journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park.
“Going into reporting, it was the first kind of the biggest politician I’ve ever met and everybody else has kind of paled in comparison,” Davidsburg said.
He says while he and the rest of the world mourns former President Carter’s passing, they will also remember his enduring legacy forever.
“How many people can say that they not only did they live to 100, but they made such an amazing use of that time,” Davidsburg said. “Giving back to the country that he loved and the state and city that he loved.”