Jim / Tom / Ted

Ted (not Fred), Tom and Jim in the graduation issue of the Crimson.  None of them were going to graduate school, and that was newsworthy.

Button and brochure from March 1975 visit.

Jim at the 1976 convention in NYC.

Jim and Tim Kraft in President Carter's study.  This was the only time Jim was called in to discuss a memo.

Jim saying good-bye to Hamilton Jordan, January 1979.  Hamilton's note says "We will miss you but also envy you."

Jim, Tom and Ted in 2019.

04-03-2025

Jim Gammill, with his Kirkland House suitemates Tom Feran and Ted Allen, recalls an eventful 24 hours in which they were senior-year overnight hosts to a presidential candidate named Jimmy Carter.

"Politics makes strange bedfellows. So does Harvard.  No one knows that better than Jim Gammill, of the Class of '75," notes Tom Feran, one of Gammill's two Kirkland House suitemates.  Joined by their other roommate, Ted Allen, in this new PassTheMic75 episode, the friends reveal a heretofore little-known chapter of Harvard history.

Here's what happened: A 1974 Washington, D.C. summer internship  had brought Gammill to the attention of the nascent Carter campaign, and early the next year, the governor's scheduler asked him if he would host Carter on a planned trip to Boston.  “You know I live in a dorm, right?” asked Jim.  This was not a problem with the presidential aspirant, or with his press aide, Jody Powell.  And so it was that Kirkland C-42 offered the future president a single bed, and Powell a second-hand couch, into which he collapsed late into the night after sharing quite a few beers with the three undergraduates.  (Carter exhibited greater self-control and slipped off to bed at a reasonable hour.)

The next morning, with Ted at the wheel of his parents' car, Jim, Tom and Ted drove Carter and Powell to an early-morning television studio appearance, a morning meeting with Governor Dukakis at the State House, a visit with the Editorial Board of The Boston Globe, and a meeting with editors of The Christian Science Monitor.  The suitemates recount these stops—and surprises along the way—with wit and good cheer.

There’s more.  Recruited by chief strategist Hamilton Jordan, Gammill went on to positions of increasing responsibility in the campaign, and, after Carter's victory in the general election, to a White House staff job.  Impressive.  And perhaps equally impressive, was this: Tom and Ted—in recognition of having been Gammill's co-hosts to Carter at Harvard—were guests at a reception at the White House the day after Carter's inauguration in January 1977.  Tom even brought a date.  She married him.