Press Clippings
Mount Airy News - June 5, 2005
Former President Carter to be Featured on Simple Living Series
By Steve Welker
MOUNT AIRY – The second season of the SIMPLE LIVING WITH WANDA URBANSKA will feature an exclusive interview with former President Jimmy Carter.
Wanda Urbanska and Frank Levering of Mount Airy; their son, Henry; and the show’s production crew spent nearly a week this spring filming in and around the former president’s hometown, Plains, Ga. They attended Carter’s Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist church, interviewed residents and visitors and Urbanska even danced with the former president.
“President Carter has always been a hero to me and Frank,” Urbanska said. “I was in college when he was elected. I admired so many of the things that he did to promote energy conservation both in the world and the country. I also followed him in his post-presidency and his humanitarian and peace efforts.”
“The presidency was one phase in the career of a great man; it really doesn’t define him,” Levering said. “He’s much bigger than being the American president. He’s an American ambassador to the world.”
The couple had thought about trying to interview Carter for the series last year, but felt they needed to establish their credentials first. In January, with the first season completed—eight half-hour SIMPLE LIVING WITH WANDA URBANSKA shows ran on many Public Broadcasting System stations in 2004 – they contacted the Carter Center in Plains.
“We proposed departing from our format and doing a half-hour special on the Carters,” Urbanska said. “After looking at the series, they suggested we do the interview in Plains.”
Their timing – the interview was set for April 20 – couldn’t have been better. They Carter Center each year invites major donors to hear briefings from Carter and other public officials. They tour Plains, including Carter’s boyhood home and the high school.
“They let our crew go along and interview people. And we were invited to a square dance on Saturday night. I ended up square-dancing with Jimmy Carter. On Sunday, April 17, we went to church where Carter teaches Sunday School … and we were granted permission to shoot that.”
The SIMPLE LIVING WITH WANDA URBANSKA team also interviewed people in and around Plains, asking them about Carter – the kind of person he is, what he’s meant to the town, etc.
“Everyone has great things to say about Jimmy,” Urbanska said. “It’s just the friendliest little town outside of Mount Airy.”
It’s also much smaller – only 700 permanent residents.
“We were filming everything we could and you could see how deeply connected the Carters are to Plains,” Levering said. “You really get this feeling of Carter’s small-town roots and small-town values in the best sense of the word. In a small town you help each other, you know each other, you’re part of the community. He has taken the same philosophy to the planet. You’ve got to help other people, work for justice, support democratic elections.
“The media spin on Carter is, coming from a humble place, he had so much to overcome. But the reality is, he was very fortunate to come from Plains. He learned things that were valuable to him later – very much to his advantage. And he always had a place to go back to.”
Urbanska and Levering stayed in a historic inn the town converted to a bed-and-breakfast. The Carters donated the land. The remodeling crew of carpenters included some prison inmates and Carter, age 80, worked alongside them. With the inn’s seven bedrooms decorated so each represents a decade form Jimmy and Roslyn Carter’s life, Mrs. Carter helped choose much of the décor.
SIMPLE LIVING WITH WANDA URBANSKA interviewed Carter in the B&B’s presidential suite. Carter’s staff blocked out 20 minutes for the interview. It ran to 35.
“We talked about the symbols of simplicity that the Carters put into play when they were in the White House,” Urbanska said. Those symbols reinforce Carter’s call for the American people to conserve energy and resources.
There were some surprising revelations.
“During the sit-down interview, he said that his first trip abroad was to Poland where he met with Edward Gierik” – premier of the then-Communist country. Levering continued, “Gierik requested a private audience and started interrogating Carter about Christianity. His mother was Catholic.”
Two years later, John Paul II became the first pope to visit Poland.
Ten years later, the Polish people threw off the shackles of Communism and had their first free elections.
“I asked Carter, too, about the pope (John Paul II),” Urbanska said. “When he visited the White House in 1979, that was historic. Jimmy fondly recalled that visit and the special connection the two of them had.”
We also discussed a lot that has happened since 1980-81 – the Carter Center, efforts to eliminate diseases in Africa, monitoring elections and trying to make peace around the world,” Urbanska said. “He works so hard to change lives and be an inspirational role model to people.”
Levering said, “I was impressed by Carter’s breadth of vision. It’s very rare you meet someone like that, who has a vision of the whole planet. My breath was taken away by his vision and his depth.
“This is someone who thinks about the challenges we’re facing on this planet, tries to be a problem solver, works at it day and night. He really has world stature.
“He is unbelievable eloquent. When he talks about Christianity to his Sunday school classes, he’s very informed, very specific. I’m a Harvard Divinity School graduate and I was really struck by his depth of knowledge about the New Testament. It’s one of many things he does so well.”
The trip to Plains resulted in hours of footage.
“We didn’t realize how open they would be,” Levering said. “Now we’re talking about doing an hour-long documentary” separate from “Simple Living.” “The theme would be the world vision of a Nobel Peace Prize winner.”
First though, Urbanska and Levering must concentrate on their jobs as SIMPLE LIVING WITH WANDA URBANSKA’S co-producers (she also is the on-air host; he writes and directs much of the show). The first season had eight programs; the second will have 10. Smead Manufacturing, a major office products manufacturer, continues as the national sponsor.
“We have shot material for most of the shows – probably 60 percent of what we need – and editing is underway,” Levering said. “The show is so much fun to do, it’s a joy. It’s a great opportunity.”
“We feel that the show is polished up a bit,” Urbanska said. As in 2004 many segments are filmed in and around Mount Airy, but the team also filmed in Poland and Denmark. The magazine format will remain – including its light-hearted featurette, “The Thing that Refused to Die” (Plains’ entry is a 12-1/2-foot-long peanut left over from a long-ago campaign trip to Evansville, Ind.)—but Urbanska and Levering said they weren’t afraid to break the format for the Carter program, which will be fourth in the series.
The new series will start in October on many PBS stations.