Robert “Buddy” Murray Jr. was a freshman at Boston College when he learned that President Jimmy Carter would be sleeping in his bed on the night of Feb. 17, 1978.
He and his older brother, the Rev. Frank Murray, a seminarian at Catholic University, and three sisters rushed to the family home on Maple Street in Bangor for the event.
Frank Murray would catch a ride back to school in Washington, D.C., on Air Force One with the president.
The former president’s decision announced Feb. 19, 2023, to go into hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia, brought memories flooding back, the brothers said shortly after.
Carter died on Sunday at age 100, more than a year after entering hospice care, The Carter Center said.
Carter and a member of his staff stayed at the house with the Murray boys’ parents, Robert Murray Sr. and Laura Murray, who had lived there since the early 1950s. Their children stayed with relatives and friends around town.
“Since the four oldest of us had moved out of the house and Buddy was only home for college vacations, there was no trouble finding a bedroom for the president,” Frank Murray, now 72, said. “But there was no room for the five of us. We disappeared to different places.”
Buddy Murray, now 62, called Carter’s visit “a unique experience” that has stayed with him and his siblings after his parents’ deaths.
“President Carter was very warm and engaging and made everyone feel at ease,” he said.
Robert Murray Sr. was chairman of the Penobscot County Democratic Committee in 1978. He had been influential in reviving the party in Maine and electing Edmund Muskie governor in 1954. Muskie, who was a U.S. senator when Carter visited, was the first Democratic governor in Maine in nearly 100 years. He would serve as Carter’s Secretary of State from May 1980 until President Ronald Reagan took office in January the following year.
But the patriarch of the Murray family said that politics had little or nothing to do with why the Carter White House picked the four-bedroom home at the corner Maple Street and Mount Hope Avenue in Bangor.
“We just thought we were average Americans and I guess they decided we were,” he told the New York Times.
Robert Murray Sr. sold appliances at Sears, which was still located in downtown Bangor. Laura Murray had returned to work as a secretary and bookkeeper after raising her children.
Not everyone in town was as excited about Carter’s visit as the Murray family was. Their next door neighbor, Donald Taylor, was a printer at the Bangor Daily News in 1978, according to a New York Times article. Taylor spray painted and hung a bedsheet on his house that read, “Welcome to Cohen Country, Mr. President.”
During his presidency, Carter held a series of town hall-style meetings around the country. His visit to New England on Feb. 17 and 18, 1978, included campaign stops to support Democratic candidates in Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine. He also heard from Mainers about their concerns in a 90-minute session at the Bangor Auditorium. Approximately 2,200 people attended.
He touched down at Bangor International Airport at 6:16 p.m., according to the president’s daily diary. Carter attended a fundraiser at the Penobscot Valley Country Club in Orono for U.S. Sen. William D. Hathaway, who 5½ years earlier had unseated Republican Sen. Margaret Chase Smith. Hathaway would lose by 22 votes to Bangor native U.S. William S. Cohen.
The president arrived at the Bangor Auditorium at 7:49 p.m. and was at the podium addressing the crowd at 8 p.m. Carter’s opening remarks focused on his comprehensive national energy plan, according to a recording in University of Maine’s digital library recorded by WLBZ radio. He told the crowd that reliance on oil and the resulting high heating costs may ultimately cost Maine jobs.
Area residents asked about an array of issues including business regulation, the proposed Dickey Lincoln Hydroelectric Project that ultimately was rejected, progress toward national health insurance, mental health care, funding to parochial schools, the plan to create a separate Department of Education, the appointment of women to decision-making positions, abortion, the Indian Land Claims, the Equal Rights Amendment, arms sales in the Middle East, the impact of malpractice insurance on the healthcare industry and steps taken to prevent another oil embargo in the United States like what caused gas shortages in 1973 and 1974.
That is not what the national press, who traveled to Bangor with Carter during a coal miners’ strike, were interested in, according to Frank Murray.
“All they wanted to know was if the president was going to invoke the emergency provision of the Taft-Hartley Act and force the miners back to work,” he said.
On March, 9, 1978, Carter ordered the miners back to work but they ignored the order. The strike ended in a settlement 10 days later and the miners were back at work on March 26, 1978.
Five weeks earlier, Carter arrived at the Murray house at 9:41 p.m. on Feb. 17, 1978, according to the White House daily diary. He spent some time with the family, spoke with First Lady Rosalynn Carter about 10 p.m. and was in Buddy Murray’s bed by 10:30 p.m. The next morning, Carter greeted the Murrays’ neighbors gathered outside before he headed to a breakfast at Husson College and another fundraiser for Hathaway.
Air Force One took off at 9:10 a.m. for Manchester, New Hampshire. Carter was back at the White House about 2 p.m. and Frank Murray, too, was back at seminary that afternoon after his ride on Air Force One and a conversation with the president.
The retired priest shared his memories of that trip in an interview about Maine politics that is archived at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives at Bates College in Lewiston. Murray served in the Maine House of Representatives from 1970 to 1974 before deciding to pursue the priesthood.
“When he discovered that I was a student at Catholic U, he said to me, ‘Well gee, Frank, you might as well come back with me on Air Force One,’” Frank Murray said. “So, I flew with him, you know, from Bangor to Manchester where he had another speech, and then from Manchester to Washington.”
On the plane with Carter were former Maine Gov. Kenneth Curtis and the senators from New Hampshire, the priest said.
“We just had this wonderful flight, just like you’re old buddies you know, and yet, you know, this really is the president of the United States,” Frank Murray said. “You’d never, never picture yourself flying on Air Force One or having that type of casual time, chit-chatting with the president.”
Carter was very interested in the seminarian’s decision to become a Catholic priest.
“He spent a lot of time just talking to me about it, [asking] what’s behind all this,” the priest said. “And not just because he’s curious but more because he has a desire to be really connecting with you.”
In retirement, Frank Murray lives in the family home. His brother, the judge, lives on the same street.
Buddy Murray’s bedroom, where Carter slept, is a guest bedroom. The scrapbook Laura Murray kept that included photos, newspaper clippings and a handwritten thank you note left for the family from the 39th president is in a box in the attic.
But there is a plaque on the front door of the house, given to the priest as a Christmas gift by one of his sisters that says: “The Murray House: Home of Robert and Laura Murray where President Jimmy Carter was an overnight guest on February 17, 1978.”
