What began as a chance encounter between local dairy farmer Wayne Harpster and US President Jimmy Carter blossomed into an unlikely forty-year friendship.
Harpster is the founder of Evergreen Farms in Spruce Creek, one of the most successful dairy farms in the area. His grandson Logan is currently a senior at Tyrone Area High School.
Beginning in 1979, Carter visited the Harpster’s Spruce Creek farm frequently, staying at the family’s cottage to fish, hunt, and share each other’s company.
After leaving the White House, Carter and Harpster traveled to fishing spots around the world. Their families also became close, sharing many meals and warm summer evenings in Spruce Creek.
While it might seem like an unlikely friendship, the two shared much in common. At the core of their relationship was their mutual love of fishing, farming, and family.
“President Carter was 12 and a half years older than I was, but we grew up in the same period, in the Depression and World War II, and so we had a lot in common. He grew up as a farmboy, and I did too, so we kind of clicked right from the beginning,” Harpster said.
Carter described his relationship with Wayne Harpster and his family in an article he wrote for a 1982 issue of Fly Fisherman magazine titled “Spruce Creek Diary.”
“Wayne Harpster is an outstanding dairy farmer and, not coincidentally, one of the best trout fishermen I know. While living in the White House we visited Wayne several times, spending a day or two in one of his farmhouses on the north bank of Spruce Creek, and for more than a year we planned to return the last week in May to celebrate two important events – Wayne’s birthday and the annual Green Drake hatch. We never quite decided which event was more significant to him, but we did accuse him of changing the date of his birthday to match the hatch,” Carter wrote.
FIRST MEETING
Harpster and President Carter first crossed paths in May 1979.
At the peak of a global oil crisis and economic recession that threatened his upcoming reelection campaign, Carter was looking for a place to get away from the intense pressures of the presidency for a quick fishing trip.
Unlike most presidents before and after, Carter was not a golfer. A lifelong outdoorsman and fly fisherman, Carter preferred to unwind on the banks of a trout stream instead of a golf course.
Like Carter, Harpster was a farmer and an avid fly fisherman. He also owned some of the land through which Spruce Creek—one of the best trout streams on the East Coast—flowed.
The stream becomes especially coveted in late May when the Green Drake mayflies hatch, creating a phenomenal fly-fishing environment.
Because Spruce Creek was just a short Marine One helicopter ride from the White House lawn, it was a perfect place for a quick presidential getaway.
Carter’s Secret Service detail had been planning the trip for weeks, but Harpster didn’t find out that the President of the United States was visiting his property until just a half an hour before he arrived.
“The Secret Service stopped at the house. I had come in just minutes before from milking cows that morning,” Harpster said.
The Secret Service agents introduced themselves and asked if they could land their helicopters in a cornfield about 400 yards from Harpster’s house.
They also said that the President would like to meet the owner of the farm.
Harpster was surprised – to say the least – but hastily got ready to go to the cornfield and meet the President of the United States when something occurred to him.
“Just before I left to go down [to the field], I thought, My goodness, there’s a [barbed] wire fence down there. I thought he wouldn’t have any way to get into the stream unless he crawled over the barbed wire fence. I’ll cut the fence for him,” Harpster said.
Soon two helicopters came over the mountains and landed in Harpster’s cornfield.
In the first were six or seven Secret Service agents, who quickly scattered around the landing zone. Next was Marine One, carrying the President and his wife.
“Almost immediately, another helicopter came in, and that’s the one that the President and Rosalynn, his wife, were in,” Harpster said. “ As soon as they stepped out, I seen they had hip boots on and official jackets and rods in their hand, and that sort of impressed me a little bit.”
Harpster met the President about 20 yards from the barbed wire fence.
“I shook his hand and Rosalynn’s hand, and immediately the President said, ‘What kind of farming you do?’ I said, ‘We’re dairy farmers,’” Harpster said.
The President then asked Harpster about the vegetation surrounding his fields and creek bank.
After a few minutes of small talk, President Carter said he was ready to fish.
“And I said to get to the stream, I’ll have to cut this barbed wire fence for you,” Harpster said.
“And he absolutely said he doesn’t want the fence cut.”
“And I said, You better cut it, you might cut your boots or something.”
“No, they said, We’ll get across it.”
At that moment, Harpster realized that President Carter was not a typical politician and possessed exceptional kindness and humility despite being the most powerful man on the planet.
“And I think that was the biggest impression I had of President Carter at that time, or even to this day, that they crawled right over that barbed wire fence. Here was the President of the United States, [climbing through] high weeds, a barbed wire fence, and a forest until it got to the creek – and I thought, that’s a little different than my impression of most politicians,” Harpster said.
After showing him to the stream, he left President Carter and Rosalynn alone to fish and returned to his work on the farm.
“Later that day, I got to thinking, I’ll take him with some flies down,” Haprster said.
So he gathered about five different flies, put them in separate plastic boxes, along with other fishing gear in his fly vest, which made the vest puffed out and full, and headed back down to the stream.
Harpster was amazed that none of the Secret Service agents stopped him on the way.
“There could have been a bunch of hand grenades in there because [of how it looked], and I walked from my house right down past probably five Secret Service [agents]. No one ever stopped me. Never asked me a question,” Harpster said.
He found President Carter and his wife fishing on the bank. They talked a little about fishing and Harpster asked him how he was doing.
Despite the high praises that he had heard about Spruce Creek, Carter’s fishing day had been underwhelming.
“I said it’s tough today. And he said, ‘Well, we managed to catch a couple.’”
Carter then asked if Harpster would like to bring his family down for a photo before he left.
So Harpster went back to the house and gathered his family, and they went back down to the stream for a photo and to bid the President farewell.
“And then not too long after that, they flew off,” Harpster said.
Neither Carter nor Harpster mentioned anything about returning to Spruce Creek, but Harpster had a hunch that he would.
“I thought he would be back. I never invited him back, but I had a feeling he would come back the next year,” Harpster said.
Just in case they ever met again, Harpster decided to do something that occurred to him earlier in the day; he would have a custom fly rod made for President Carter.
“I had a friend who was a salesman for Fenwick Fishing Rods. I said, could you get me a rod with President Carter’s name on it?” Harpster said.
A FRIENDSHIP BLOSSOMS – MAY 1980
Harper’s hunch was correct.
Carter returned the following year for the mayfly hatch but didn’t go to Harpster’s property. This time Marine One landed on a nearby property that belonged to the Spruce Creek Rod and Gun Club.
However, Harpster visited the area and asked the Secret Service if he could see the President and present him with the custom fly rod.
Carter agreed and soon the two sat on a log together near the stream and talked.
“I gave him that rod, and he was all happy because he just caught a nice 16-inch brown trout on one of the flies I gave him the year before,” Harpster said.
They talked for only about 10 minutes, but that conversation would be the start of their long and close friendship.
“I said, President Carter [and] he said, You don’t need to call me President Carter. You can call me Jimmy now.” Harpster replied, “You’re our President. I’ll call you President Carter if that’s all right. And I always called him President Carter. I’ve known him for 44 years, and a lot of people call him Jimmy, but I just couldn’t do that.”
Harpster then made an offer to the President.
“I said, I have a cottage and about a mile of trout stream. I said, ‘If you ever wanted to come to Spruce Creek again and stay for a couple of days over a weekend, or whatever. I could make it available to you,” Harpster said. “So that was it. I left to go to work, and he went fishing.”
Less than a week later, Harpster was at his cottage cleaning fish when the phone rang. Harpster asked his friend to answer it because his hands were bloody.
“So he went over and answered it. And we always had pranks between us, and all of a sudden, he said, “Hey Harpster…the President wants to talk to you.”
“And I thought he was just pulling on me. So for about 30 seconds, I kept on cleaning the fish. And then I thought, maybe it is him. So I hurried up and wiped my hands off quickly, and went over, got on the phone, and we talked for about 10 minutes.”
Carter said he would like to come up for a weekend visit…the very next day.
“So that’s how our relationship really started. And there are so many stories in 44 years,” Harpster said.
CARTER AT SPRUCE CREEK
Their friendship grew stronger as the President’s visits became more frequent.
“I can’t say how many times he came that summer (of 1980), but he might have come eight to ten times,” Harpster said.
On one of those trips, Harpster took Carter upstream into a more mountainous area that required a lot of effort to get to.
“We’d have to crawl [under] a couple of fences, and when we would walk out of there, it was pitch dark, and the weeds would be shoulder high. There are rattlesnakes up there and all kinds of stuff. And it didn’t bother him at all. And he was a real trooper,” Harpster said.
At night Harpster would take Carter in his pickup truck through local fields to spot deer with a high-powered light, sometimes with humorous outcomes.
The Secret Service was to keep Carter in their sight at all times, so they would follow in another vehicle.
“We would maybe go over 1000 acres in an evening, shining these lights [out of the moving truck window] and seeing the deer,” Harpster said. “I jumped from one field to the next because I knew where the holes were to get to the next field, but we were forgetting about Secret Service, and we lost them. So we were about 15 to 20 minutes and the Secret Service was way over in another field.”
President Carter would also visit to hunt turkey, ring-neck pheasants, and chukars on the Harpster’s property.
As the visits became more frequent, Harpster began inviting experts to hunt and fish with the President. Professor George Harvey, who founded the fly fishing program at Penn State, and the legendary fly fisherman Joe Humphrey, were two frequent visitors to Spruce Creek when the President was at Spruce Creek.
“They helped Rosalynn a lot to cast and she became an excellent caster,” Harpster said.
On one trip, Carter presented Harpster with a box he made by hand for his birthday. Carter wrote about it in his Spruce Creek Diary article:
“We returned to Spruce Creek later that day for Wayne’s birthday party, attended primarily by his relatives and old friends of his father. For a present, I gave him a small, handmade mahogany box, with dovetailed corners and a panel-top lined with leather, hand-tooled with his name and a leaping trout. It had taken me almost a week to make it, and I could only hope that my obvious special effort made up for the amateur quality of some of the workmanship,” Carter wrote about the gift.
According to Harpster, when Carter visited he always wanted to help with chores around the farm.
“Oh. he said, I’ll help you do that, or I’ll help you do this,” Harpster said.”We were just like family.”
Politics was never a part of their relationship.
Harpster, a lifelong Republican, and Carter, a Democratic President, prove that differences in politics don’t matter to good people.
Harpster would be the only Republican in the room at gatherings involving the President, but it was never an issue between the two.
“I never talked hardly ever to him about politics,” Harpster said. “He knew I was a Republican but I did campaign for him. When he was first elected, I didn’t vote for him. I voted for [Ford], but after I got to know the President, I went to different counties and the Democratic caucuses and told the people how good of a man he was, and so forth. Of course, I did vote for him the second time.”
TRAVELING THE WORLD WITH PRESIDENT CARTER
Their friendship became closer in 1981 when they took their first of many international trips together.
After losing his reelection bid in 1980, Carter decided to go on a fishing trip to China and Japan and wanted Harpster to accompany him.
“It was just out of the blue. I didn’t even have a passport,” Harpster said. “I met him in San Francisco, and from there we flew to Japan [to Bejing], and that was a great experience for a young guy at that time.”
It was an eighteen-day trip. They spent the first portion of it in China visiting most of the country’s major tourist sites, with little fanfare and no press coverage.
“We saw pyramids, we saw the Great Wall, we saw the Forbidden City. We stayed there for I think, 12 days, and so it was a great experience, and I took a lot of pictures,” Harpster said.
The final six days were spent in Japan. They began in Osaka, where Harpster said there was a magnificent party featuring the best fish and beef you can find on Earth and the last stop was in Tokyo.
It was the first of many excursions that Harpster and Carter would go on together.
Harpster accompanied Carter on two trips to Russia, four to Argentina, one each to Mongolia, Venezuela, and Honduras.
At the center of most of these trips was their shared love of fishing, but one of the most memorable trips that Harpster took as a guest of the President had nothing to do with the outdoors.
When Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his decades of work on the issues of democracy and human rights, Harpster and his wife were personal guests of the President when he traveled to Stockholm, Sweden to accept the award.
“That was a wonderful trip, and to see him get it well deserved, too, for all the things he did for this country and people all over the world, he was doing good things all the time,” Harpster said.
HARPSTER FAMILY MEMORIES
President Carter returned the favor in 1980 and invited the Harpster family to the White House.
Harpster drove his wife Marjorie, daughters Heidi and Christie, and sons Abe, Aaron, and Andy right up to the White House gate, where the White House staff helped them with their luggage and took them to their White House accommodations.
“We slept in the White House and had dinner there that evening with the President. And then next evening, we went to the Kennedy Center, and they provided a van, and we visited many places in DC at the time, and that was something special,” Harpster said.
On another occasion, the Carters used the carpentry skills that they were famous for by working with Habitat for Humanity on a project at the Harpster family farm.
“One time, when he was there, I said to President, I think I’m going to build a covered bridge. And he said we’ll come up and help you,” Harpster said.
Harpster built the frame, and the Carters arrived for the weekend to help construct the sides of the bridge.
“Roselyn and him came up on Friday, and they helped everyone. Rosalynn was on the ladder, nailed boards on the side of the covered bridge, and [President Carter] cut all those boards out and made it all. They’re all the same,” Harpster said.
“We put benches on each side so you could eat there. The next Saturday we had a covered dish bridge party. Paul Volker was there, the head of the Federal Federal Reserve, and of course, the Carter family was there, and my mother was there. And we had a great party there on the covered bridge,” Harpster said.
Harpster’s son Abe also recalled how Carter’s faith played a central role in his life.
“When we would ever have a dinner with the family, which was just about every evening that he was there…everybody would always get in a circle and all hold hands, and then President Carter would always do the blessing,” Wayne’s son Abe Harpster said.
Harpster’s grandson Logan, a current TAHS senior, remembers Carter fondly for making time for him.
“He would always take time out of his trip to talk with me and play catch with a football,” Logan Harpster said.
One significant detail that Harpster recalled from Carter’s regular visits was the President’s post-meal routine.
“He would be the first one done eating…almost every time he would jump up and start doing the dishes,” Harpster said.
CARTER’S FINAL YEARS
As Carter’s health deteriorated, the visits became less frequent but the two never lost touch.
The last time Harpster spoke personally to the President was about three years before he passed.
“I was driving, and I got a call from him. [Carter’s son] Chip arranged it, and he just wanted to talk to me. We talked on the phone. It was a little bit hard for me to understand [him], but we talked for maybe three or four minutes, and that was the last time,” Harpster said.
Wayne and his wife Marjorie were guests at Carter’s 75 wedding anniversary party in Plains, GA in June 2021.
“I was about 15 feet walking up to him. It was my turn to go up and meet him. He said, ‘Wayne’, with a big smile on his face. So, you know, I knew it was a big day for him. And I just shook his hand, and they took a picture of me with him, and then I talked to Rosalynn,” Harpster said.
Following President Carter’s passing, the Harpster family was fortunate enough to receive an invitation to his official state funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C
Wayne’s son Abe was grateful to be able to attend such a significant event.
“Attending President Carter’s State funeral at the National Cathedral was a great honor and amazing experience. I’m glad our family could be there to pay our final respects to a special friend and one of the greatest humanitarians to ever grace our nation,” Abe Harpster said.
One story that Harpster shared highlighted the depth and importance of their relationship with the President.
In 1980, Senator Ted Kennedy famously challenged Carter for the 1980 Presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in New York City.
Kennedy, Carter’s chief rival for the nomination in the Democratic primaries, sought the votes of delegates held by Carter.
Carter and his political allies beat back the challenge to his nomination, but the event took a huge political and emotional toll on Carter.
According to Carter, he had been up for 17 hours without sleep, and as soon as the convention ended, Carter was ready to unwind.
Of all the places Carter had ties to, there was only one that would provide him with the relaxation that he sought, Spruce Creek.
When Carter arrived on Harpster’s property, he disappeared for a solo fishing trip while his wife Rosalynn went to Harpster’s cabin to sleep. A few hours later, Carter joined her to get some rest.
“He told me later on that trip, when he got some rest, he said, ‘I could have went any place in the world, [but] I came here to Spruce Creek,’” Harpster said.
