PORT ANGELES — Which famous living person would you most like to meet?
Such was the question Carol Swarbrick Dries asked her husband, Jim, when he marked his 65th birthday nine years back.
Former President Jimmy Carter, replied Jim, a retired schoolteacher and returned Peace Corps volunteer.
Carol, 67 and a stage actress and singer, shared his admiration for the 39th president; she stars, in fact, in “Miss Lillian Speaks,” a one-woman show about Jimmy’s late mother, Lillian Carter.
In spring 2011 when the play was in development, Carol wrote to the Carter Center, the Atlanta-based international human rights and public health organization, about it. She sent a DVD with her letter, in which she mentioned Jim’s wish.
Not too long after, Carol and Jim, who live in Dungeness, received a personal letter from Jimmy.
Meet the family
He invited them to his hometown of Plains, Ga., “to meet more of the family.”
“My hands were shaking” holding that letter, Carol recalled.
“I kept asking: Is this a joke?”
Carol and Jim did travel to Plains to meet Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter on Oct. 1, 2011 — Jimmy’s 87th birthday — and the Carters gave the Drieses a tour of the Pond House, where Lillian lived the last years of her life.
That was just the start. The four have stayed in touch.
This spring, Carol and Jim went to the 2015 Plains Presidential Auction, a fundraiser for the community-building organization called the Plains Better Hometown Program.
One of the lots up for bid: a Labor Day weekend fishing trip and lunch with the Carters on the pond by Lillian’s house.
Carol and Jim, as it turned out, had friends in Sequim, George Frandsen and David Carlquist, who love to fish and who admire the Carters.
They put together a group of friends and family members, set a bid ceiling and sent Carol and Jim forth to Plains.
Bidding was brisk.
It got down to the Sequim group and another bidder. Then Carol, Jim and crew reached their maximum and had to watch as the other bidder got the trip.
But the Drieses had been to other benefit auctions, including one for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS in New York City.
There, a donor who sold one popular auction prize, decided to make a second available to the next-highest bidder.
Second fishing trip
Jim and Carol asked whether the Carters might consider a second fishing trip. The answer was yes, and the Sequim bidders, much to their delight, landed it.
But “this was back in April,” Carol noted, “before we knew Jimmy Carter was mortal.”
Carter, 91, held a news conference in August to announce that melanoma, a form of cancer, had been found in his brain and that he would undergo radiation treatment.
The Sequim group couldn’t be sure that the fishing was still on.
But then Carol got the phone call from Carter’s office that yes, it was: Come on over on Sept. 5, so let’s have all of your personal information for the Secret Service security check.
Off they flew to Georgia, the Drieses along with Frandsen, Carlquist and their friends from Sequim and Port Angeles: Paul Muench, Carol Snedden, Darrell Plank, Brian S. Burke and Marcia Farrell.
Meeting Jimmy and Rosalynn was utterly “amazing,” said Farrell, a retired vocational counselor.
When the group arrived at the pond, there Jimmy was, in jeans and a denim shirt, ready to fish.
He and Rosalynn provided a fishing guide for the guests and let them know lunch would be served later.
Then Jimmy got to work.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate walked around the shore to a quiet spot, Farrell said. Jimmy was meditative, “not a real chatterbox;” no Bill Clinton he.
“There were a lot of fish being caught — mostly by him,” she said, adding that much to her surprise, she hooked one, too.
Fishing flies from Forks
Farrell also brought a gift for Jimmy and Rosalynn: a specially made box of fishing flies from Gordy Gracey of Forks, a guide who took the Carters fishing in Alaska years ago.
One fly was named for Rosalynn.
“You can’t imagine how graceful and kind she is,” Farrell said; the former first lady, 88, is sweet as the tea on a Georgia summer day.
At lunch, the conversation flowed easily, Carol added.
“Mr. Carter was so relaxed and fun,” talking about the Pond House, where his mother, Lillian, lived after coming home from her Peace Corps service — from age 68 to 70 — in India.
It’s also where the newly elected president hosted his cabinet members and visitors from around the world.
The next day, Jimmy taught adult Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church, as he does several times a month.
On this morning, he introduced Carol to the congregation as the actress who portrays his mother.
Staged on Peninsula
“Miss Lillian Speaks” will come to stages on the North Olympic Peninsula, if all goes as planned. Carol hopes to give performances here in January and February.
She’s also booked Feb. 13 at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Mo., and in March at theaters in Lenox, Mass., and The Villages, Fla.
Farrell, for her part, was reminded of another presidential experience she had: attending President Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009.
While that was something she shared with a gigantic throng on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the Plains trip was “so personal, so individual,” she said.
“This adventure will live in my heart,” she said.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
