‘Tom’ a.k.a. ‘Jimmy’ Cary, still displays Carter photo

Jimmy Cary, left, re-enacting Mark Twain’s famed character, Tom Sawyer, shakes hands with President Jimmy Carter on Hannibal’s riverfront, Aug. 23, 1979. Photo contributed by Jim Cary, who is now a principal, Cardinal Architecture in Seattle Wash.

MARY LOU MONTGOMERY

For the Courier-Post

Tom Sawyer, aka 13-year-old Jimmy Cary, was among the first to greet Jimmy Carter when the president stepped off the Delta Queen on Thursday morning, Aug. 23, 1979. With an outstretched arm, Cary shook the president’s hand, a moment that was captured for posterity by a White House photographer.

“(Carter’s) hand was out,” Cary said in a telephone interview from his home in Seattle, Wash., in the spring of 2024.  President Carter said, “‘I know who you are,’ in a southern accent. It was the perfect line.”

Cary, who is now principal, Cardinal Architecture in Seattle Wash., makes sure to prominently display that handshake photo when his Republican relatives come to visit.

“I’ve lived in Seattle 25 years; have a lovely wife, Susan, and son also named James, just graduating from high school,” Cary said that while his father, James E. Cary, faced an untimely death in 2005, his mother, Anne Ellerman Cary, living in Hannibal, “is 83 and doing great.”

Jimmy Cary and Cindy Moseley had been named Hannibal’s official Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher on the Fourth of July 1979. They had no idea, at the time, that their ambassador roles would thrust them into the national spotlight.

“I remember it was early season football, and I had to get out of football practice,” to greet the president, Cary said. “Cindy Moseley and I showed up with all the politicians, the governor, U.S. Rep. Harold Volkmer, and our mayor (Lillian Herman). When the moment came for the president to come down the gangway, they pushed Cindy and me to the front. So we were the first people the Carters met.

“I was a fan, and remember that Amy was very close to our age. I was 13. It wasn’t always comfortable standing around with all those adults; we wondered how Amy was doing. We spent some time chatting with Amy. Cindy carried the conversation.

“I remember that Cindy and I were in a very fortunate position to be standing with the group of politicians. It was friendly group, everyone was chatting with each other. It was not a political event. The president was the thing.”

Jimmy and Cindy accompanied the presidential group as it toured the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum.

“One of things I remember, Henry Sweets belonged to our church (First Presbyterian). Dad and Henry played all the church sports together,” Cary said. During the tour, “Henry was in his element. He did everything perfectly. I was part of the tour through the home. Henry was on point. I can’t imagine anybody having a job better suited for their skill set than Henry.

“I can’t imagine Hannibal being what it is today without Henry being there.”

Sprucing up

Preparations for this handshake - and Carter’s visit to Hannibal - began some 10 days prior, when word first filtered into Hannibal that President Carter and family would be aboard the historic stern wheeler Delta Queen when it next docked on the town’s shoreline. At once, citizens and security personnel alike began preparing for the monumental event.

Tom Rastorfer and his younger brother Charlie, were among the local youth who helped spruce up the historic district in preparation for Jimmy Carter’s visit. “My mom (Phoebe) was working at the Mark Twain home and museum,” he said, “and she got us the job.” Among other duties, Tom and Charlie pulled weeds at the Tom and Huck Statue, where they were photographed by Mark Prout, Courier-Post photojournalist. “We were always trying to do yard work to make money. I think we got a little bit of money, maybe 2 or 3 bucks an hour.”

Rastorfer, who is now a featured musician at the Big Cedar Lodge, near Branson, rode his bicycle downtown on the day of Carter’s visit, and followed the motorcade toward the Mark Twain Cave.

“We lived out by the high school (4000) Sunset drive, on top of that hill. Where we lived, our back yard met up with the family called Tamerius; they had four boys our same age.”

On the day of the Presidential visit, the boys rode their bikes downtown together. “I was 13, my 9 and 11-year-old brothers, we tried to wave at the President and Mrs. Carter (as the motorcade was en route toward the cave) and Amy was there too; she was about our age.

“I’ll never forget it. It was Travis Tamerius who pointed to my brother Charlie. He said, ‘Amy,’ and pointed at my little brother and said 'he likes you.’  That’s something little boys would have been doing back then. We were having a good time. She blushed.

“I thought it was cool, heck it was the president. We knew it was a big deal. That whole time in Hannibal was a great time, 1975-1985. I had a ball.”

Delegation

A specifically selected delegation met the Carters when the Delta Queen arrived in Hannibal. Among those Hannibalians was Jacqua Brown, who at the time was a young, single mother working for the Hannibal Board of Public Works. She accompanied her minister, the Rev. James Smedley, and William Morrison Sr., both representing the Willow Street Christian Church and Douglass Community Center, when it - and the church - were based out of the old Douglass School building.

“Rev. Smedley was a black preacher. Wherever there was publicity, or cameras, there always had to be a representation of minorities,” she said. She described it as the quota system. “Everywhere you went - although they didn’t make it known - there had to be a black person.”

Jacqua, as a city employee, was sometimes tapped to fill this role.

“I was (at the riverfront) long enough to meet (President Carter), then I went back to work.”

She worked for the BPW until 1980, when she married and left Hannibal. She is now a spiritual life coach working out of Dallas, Texas.

Serving soft drinks

Cassano’s Pizza and Seafood Restaurant, 415 N. Main., was front and center for the Carter visit. Located across the street from the Tom and Huck Statue, Manager Don Harvey saw the event as a sales opportunity.

Harvey, who is now semi-retired from the business, remembers that there was a Pepsi wagon up on the parking lot, and he said he was probably on site during the visit, selling cold drinks.

“Our youngest son, Matt, was a toddler. Carol, my wife, had him on the front line (across the street) in front of Murphy Motors.” Carol managed to reach out Matt’s arm, so that the President could shake his hand. “The Secret Service went crazy,” Don said.

Today, Matt is the manager and co-owner of Cassano’s at the intersection of James Road and U.S. 61, and also the Quincy facility.

The former Cassano’s building is now the museum’s Interpretive Center.

Don remembers that a couple of weeks in advance of the Presidential visit, there were agents checking out the restaurant’s roof, and on the day of the visit, there were a  “couple of fellas” up on top as a security detail.

Feeding the crowd

When Jimmy Carter came to Hannibal, “My mom and dad (John and Betty Noonan) ran the Ole Planters Restaurant,”Joe Noonan said. 

Joe himself was about 19, he said, and was on hand to help with the food preparation.

“He remembers that the Carters’ visit coincided with the hostage situation in Iran, so security “was probably twice as much as normal. Prior to the Carter visit, security personnel searched the second floors of all the Main Street buildings, and city crews even paved over the man hole covers.”

Their family’s restaurant, 316 N. Main, was within a block of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home, and couldn’t be open on the day of the visit. Instead, the Noonans made take-out sandwiches to sell. “One agent watched us make the sandwiches for the president and his entourage.

“We had to wrap them in plastic,” so the sandwiches themselves were visible. “Ham, turkey, cheese, lettuce and tomato,” Noonan said. They also made sandwiches for the people who crowded downtown to see the president.

There were a lot of people downtown,” Joe Noonan said, “but you couldn’t tell a single word (the president) said. Everybody seemed to be happy: No protestors.

“That’s when I used to vote Democratic. Now I don’t vote” along party lines, he said.

Note: Mary Lou Montgomery retired as editor of the Hannibal Courier-Post on on New Year’s Eve 2014, after 39 years of writing for her hometown newspaper.

The White House sent an autographed photo and a letter to young Jimmy Cary, aka Tom Sawyer, following President Carter’s visit to Hannibal on Aug. 23, 1979. Photo contributed by Jim Cary, who is now a principal, Cardinal Architecture in Seattle Wash.