Letterman and Carters launch Habitat project at Notre Dame

From their seats, almost 4,000 people watched former President Jimmy and wife Rosalynn Carter walk into the Purcell Pavilion, as a man with a long white beard tagged along.

David Letterman. It had been a secret. Even some of the local Habitat for Humanity staff didn’t know the retired late-night TV host would be there Sunday at the University of Notre Dame. Not just to kick off an intense, five-day work blitz for 2,000 volunteers building homes in Mishawaka, known as the 35th annual Carter Work Project. But to introduce the 39th president.

Letterman took the crowd back to the time he was watching TV news of Hurricane Katrina.

“You want to do something, but you don’t know what it is,” he said of himself.

He called Habitat, then called on friends from Montana, Indianapolis and New York, who came with him to hammer. When a storm ravaged Houston, they again went, this time to muck out moldy drywall and insulation from flooded homes.

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