Callaway and Carter had clashed in 1961 over the location of a four-year state college. Carter wanted the school in Americus; Callaway, a University of Georgia regent, preferred Columbus, the site of the Army base Fort Benning. Both cities now have four-year institutions. Callaway and Carter graduated from separate military academies, Callaway at West Point and Carter from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. Though he had criticized Callaway's use of "God, Country, and Motherhood" as a campaign theme, Carter himself adopted similar platitudes in future races. Carter complained to Eugene Patterson, then editor of the "Atlanta Constitution", that the state's largest newspaper was partial to Callaway despite its primary preference for Democratic former Governor Ellis Arnall, rather than Carter and its neutrality in the general election. In his memoirs, Carter does not mention Callaway, an associate of U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, Jr., whom Carter unseated in 1976. However, Rosalynn Smith Carter termed Callaway a "favorite" of the John Birch Society even though Callaway had repudiated the anti-communist group founded by Robert Welch after Welch alleged that former President Dwight D. Eisenhower had been a "conscious agent of the communist conspiracy". She further recalled that a tobacco-chewing Callaway backer in Washington, Georgia had spat upon her. Years later, Callaway recalled Carter as "a very sincere man trying to do his best who was simply over his head in the White House and was not able to be the decisive leader that the country needed."