Jimmy Carter and my father were born two days apart in 1924, Carter on Oct. 1 in Plains, Georgia, and my Dad on Oct. 3 in Altus, Oklahoma. They would meet 28 years later in the unlikely Canadian town of Chalk River, Ontario. Meanwhile, each donned Navy uniforms in 1942, Carter entering the U. S. Naval Academy to graduate in 1946, a year after the Second World War concluded. My father was dispatched to Officer Candidate School at Columbia University in New York City from a Navy ROTC program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Anointed one of the Navy’s “90-day-wonders,” he went on to training at minesweep school.

Following practice patrols out of Hollywood, Florida, he moved on to the Panama Canal Zone where there were constant concerns the sea lanes into the critical waterway would be mined by either German or Japanese submarines. Several months later he proceeded to the South Pacific where he swept mines defending assault beaches for U.S. Marines leading the “island hopping” campaign up through Okinawa. He told my brother and I the happiest day of his life was the August 1945 bombing of Hiroshima. It meant there would be no need for a planned invasion of the Japanese mainland. As years elapsed, though, he began to question whether we may have opened Pandora’s box.

Our Dad didn’t return home until late 1946, a full year after the Japanese surrender, as navy minesweepers were required to remain in the Philippines to remove American mines which were placed in the archipelago’s shipping channels to slow the Japanese invasion of 1942. During a hasty evacuation of the islands, American maps of its own minefields were lost, misplaced or forgotten — a dereliction of duty my father personally never forgave General Douglas MacArthur. My twin brother and I were nearly two years old before we met him. He would return to college on the G.I. bill at what was then New Mexico A&M, now New Mexico State in Las Cruces. His parents lived there and could help with babysitting. He resumed playing his French horn in the pep band at football games, receiving his chemical engineering degree in 1948.

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Hired by Phillips Petroleum, we moved to company headquarters in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, for several months prior to his transfer to a carbon black plant in Borger, Texas. It was located in the panhandle’s “tornado alley” and there were common, underground shelters located in the center of each company housing rectangle. I still recall nighttime sprints to the shelter through spitting rain with lightning bolts which illuminated twisters along the horizon. When offered a transfer in 1951 to the Atomic Energy Commission’s Reactor Test Site in Arco, Idaho, just outside Idaho Falls, my father jumped at the opportunity. He would start earning the princely sum of a thousand dollars a month. Their assignment was proving and testing designs for Admiral Hyman Rickover’s vision for  a nuclear navy.

Although the first reactor powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, didn’t launch until 1958, Rickover was already interviewing and selecting officers for his nuclear fleet. A demanding commander, the legend developed alleging he always took candidates to a lunch which included soup. If the applicant added salt or pepper without first tasting it, they were disqualified. One young naval officer who satisfied the admiral he was smart enough and disciplined enough to serve was Jimmy Carter. Although he would never serve on a nuclear vessel, Carter was pulled into responding to the first reactor malfunction in 1952 when the Canadian NRX (National Research Experimental) located at its Chalk River Laboratories experienced a core failure and subsequent explosion. There was considerable fear the situation might grow much worse. My father and Lieutenant Carter were about to meet, although the accident was hidden for several decades.

Eventually, thousands of Canadian and American soldiers and sailors would participate in the clean-up of the NRX building. Among those, Rickover dispatched 24 sailors under Carter’s command from the Navy’s Knolls Lab. My father, who was familiar with the Canadian reactor designs, was also dispatched by the Atomic Energy Commission to instruct Americans on what they would be doing and why. At first, assigned repairs had to be completed in 90 seconds stretching to three minutes as the situation was brought under increasing control. As Jonathan Alter explains in his Carter biography, “His Very Best”, the Canadians constructed a mock-up of the reactor room on a nearby tennis court. “There, the teams simulated every second of the week-long training, racing on to the tennis court to remove as many flanges and turn as many valves as possible in 90 seconds,” Alter explains. My father was one of their trainers.

I didn’t learn of this encounter until 1975 when Carter announced his presidential campaign. Since my Dad had been a nuclear engineer, although by then retired, I was intrigued with Carter’s background. In a pre-internet world, it took me a few months to contact his campaign in Atlanta and I soon received a two-inch-thick binder of white papers. Soon after an invitation arrived to meet the candidate at the Marina Hotel on Colfax Avenue at a meet-and-greet hosted by Dick Lamm’s Cabinet member, former legislator Wellington Webb. No more than 20 Democrats showed up and Carter would invite stragglers to his room following the reception. He plumped up pillows on his bed and answered our questions until 2 a.m. Successful politicians usually have at least one astonishing skill — Carter was phenomenal meeting with small groups.

It was the comedian Jeff Foxworthy who observed, because of his southern accent, “As soon as I open my mouth, people subtract 15 or 20 points from my IQ.” Washington made the same mistake with Jimmy Carter. Carrying his own bag, sleeping overnight in the homes of supporters, he swept the Iowa caucuses, making them the “real deal” they remain in presidential primaries. His promise to deliver a government as good as the American people and to never lie to them is frequently cited as a sign of his weakness as a politician. Contrast that with a president-elect who lies about everything and is perceived as strong for it. I beg to differ. Jimmy Carter had his failings, to be sure, as we all do — yet his decency, integrity and commitment to defending human rights has no recent parallel.

The New York Times headlined its tribute to the former president, “America Needs More Jimmy Carters.” He warned us about the danger of climate change long before it was a thing, although I took advantage of his tax rebates to add a passive solar room on my North Denver bungalow in 1978. Jimmy also believed the United States should keep its word and return the Panama Canal to the Panamanians as we long promised. Then-President Donald Trump declined to attend Joe Biden’s inauguration, while, in 1986, Ronald Reagan spoke at the dedication of the Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter also delivered the eulogy at former President Gerald Ford’s funeral, the man he defeated and made a friend. Steve Ford read his father’s eulogy for Jimmy, prepared in the event Carter died first as they had agreed, at the National Cathedral. There could be no better testimony to Jimmy’s human decency. It tells us the New York Times got it right about Jimmy Carter — we could use more Americans just like him.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.