Memories of President Jimmy Carter: Former TOUR Commissioner Tim Finchem shares impact of presidential legacy

Editor's note: For a good part of President Jimmy Carter’s four years in the White House, former PGA TOUR Commissioner Tim Finchem served as the President’s Deputy Advisor for Economic Affairs. In this piece, Finchem reflects on his memories of President Carter.

Current PGA TOUR commissioner Jay Monahan also remembers President Jimmy Carter: "President Carter was a leader who lived a life of integrity, humanity and a love of country. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, the American people and the countless lives he impacted over the last 100 years."

Throughout my life, I have had the privilege of playing golf with several U.S. presidents. I never played golf with Jimmy Carter because Jimmy Carter didn’t play golf. And while I had many experiences with the former president while I worked for him during his administration, two memories stand out that took place not when we were together in the White House but, rather, when I was the PGA TOUR’s commissioner.

One spring, I decided to take some friends to Alaska for a combined skiing and fishing trip. The trip coincided with my birthday. Included in the group were a couple of TOUR players, Davis Love III and Justin Leonard. After concluding the skiing part of the trip, we caught a plane to do some fishing. This was not exactly the most luxurious of trips. We were on a prop plane that moved very slowly and made a whole lot of noise. And we were jammed in there. There may have been enough seats for all of us to sit, but I really can’t recall. As we’re cruising along, with our single pilot in the cockpit, he says to us in a loud voice — he had to [shout] for us to hear him over the nose from the propellers — “Would you take a moment and look out of your windows from both sides of the plane?”

We did as he instructed, and we saw mountains and land for as far as we could see — most of it snow-covered. It was an amazing sight.

The pilot continued: “Now that you’ve done that, I want you to know and take away one thing when you leave here. You need to know that everything you just looked at, President Jimmy Carter saved. All that land was going in the wrong direction, whether it was for (oil) drilling or for development. President Carter took office and eventually decided that he wanted to save all that land for future use, for people like us who were in Alaska vacationing. When you go back to your homes, you tell them that Jimmy Carter is this country’s biggest friend of the environment.”

As we all know, President Carter, since leaving office after the 1980 election, has also had a singular devotion to Habitat for Humanity, the organization that uses volunteer labor to build simple, affordable housing for people in need. Back in 2000, President Carter’s office contacted me at TOUR headquarters informing me that he was coming to Jacksonville, Florida, to build a house, and he wanted to know would the PGA TOUR and its employees be interested in volunteering.

I jumped at the opportunity, and the response from TOUR employees was tremendous.

It had been several years since I had seen the president, so it was great to reconnect, especially since we were all involved in such a worthy cause. Prior to getting started at the house site on the northside of Jacksonville, not far from Brentwood Golf Course, site of Cary Middlecoff’s 1949 Jacksonville Open victory, President Carter said: “Now, Tim, are you familiar with hammering and nailing and what goes into framing a house?” I proudly responded with: “Well, Mr. President, as a matter of fact, I grew up in construction, and although it’s been a while, I feel like I’ll be OK.”

He seemed satisfied with that answer, and he came back with: “Let’s the two of us pair up, and we’ll work together for the day.”

Once at the job site, I put on my tool belt and went to work. I hadn’t swung the hammer more than twice when President Carter stopped me and told me I needed to work on my hammering. “I’m not so sure about your technique, Tim,” he gently said. “Here, let me show you how to do it. You watch me for a few minutes, and you’ll get the hang of it.”

I thought I knew how to handle a hammer and what to do on a job site, but President Carter thought differently. He was not having it. I suppose I eventually contributed at least a little to the construction of that house, I had a great day working alongside him and the TOUR staff did great work getting that house built.

President Carter was a wonderful human being, soft-spoken and so easy to talk to, and I’ll be forever grateful for all the interactions I had with him — both in the White House and otherwise.

I also can’t look at a hammer and not think of him.