Not only did Salisbury native Phil Kirk meet and talk with President Jimmy Carter on a commercial flight to Washington, D.C., in 1984, he talked the former president into autographing a stuffed elephant for his newly born daughter, Ashlee.

Here’s how it happened.

Kirk was flying back to Washington, D.C., to return to the family home in Arlington, Virginia, and his job as Senator Jim Broyhill’s chief of staff.

“When I boarded the plane, I saw President and Mrs. Carter sitting on the first row and they were both reading so I, of course, did not interrupt them,” Kirk said in an email to the Post. “When I got to the back of the plane, I wrote on my business card that I knew three friends of his….my boss, Senator Broyhill; the Commissioner of NC Agriculture Jim Graham (also a native of Rowan County) ; and Johnsie Setzer, a Democratic activist from Catawba County.”

Kirk was surprised to see the former president walking toward where Kirk was sitting at the back of the plane.

“He was shaking hands with everyone as he walked. He obviously did not know what I looked like so I introduced myself to him when he got to me,” Kirk said. “Then, I was suddenly speechless. I asked him where he was going and he replied that he was going to the D.C. area to see a new grandchild. So I told him that I had a new daughter and that I had purchased a stuffed animal at the airport gift shop for Ashlee.”

Kirk nervously asked the former president if he would autograph the elephant for his daughter.

According to Kirk, the president politely responded, “The Secret Service does not want me to sign autographs but if you will put the elephant in the bag and send it by the flight attendant to me when I am back in my seat, I will sign it. Please write her name on a note so I will spell it correctly.”

By the way, he misspelled “Ashlee” as “Ashley.”

“So I followed instructions and sent the elephant in the bag by the flight attendant,” Kirk said. “I could see that the president himself signed the tag on the symbol of the Republican Party. I was so excited.

“While I can’t prove it, I believe that my daughter Ashlee has the only elephant actually signed by President Carter. I have worked in gubernatorial and congressional offices enough to know that most of the presidential signatures are done by auto-pen or by a staff person who has learned how to sign the official’s name to look the same as his or her signature. Since I could see the president actually signing the stuffed elephant, I know it is his original signature.”

That is not the end of the story, however.

“With the election of Governor Jim Martin in November 1984, we moved back to Raleigh where I became the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services,” Kirk said. “We had not moved everything from our house in Arlington to Raleigh when we received a phone call that our home had been broken into so my wife and her mother drove to northern Virginia to see the damage. This was before cell phones so I waited until they had time to get to Arlington to call.”

Kirk had one thing on his mind during that time.

“Did they get the elephant?” Kirk asked. “They did not.”