NOVEMBER 29, 2023:
PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Rosalynn Carter is set to receive her final accolades and farewells in Plains, Georgia. It’s the same tiny town where the former first lady was born. There, she and former President Jimmy Carter based his 1976 presidential campaign and returned after their White House years as they became global humanitarians. Rosalynn Carter died Nov. 19, 2023. Her funeral Wednesday (Nov. 29, 2023) will be held at Maranatha Baptist Church. The service comes on the last of three days of public tributes. The 99-year-old former president attended a memorial service Tuesday in Atlanta. Rosalynn Carter will be buried in a plot she will one day share with her husband.
NOVEMBER 28, 2023:
ATLANTA (AP) — Rosalynn Carter will be memorialized with classical music and beloved hymns, some of her favorite Biblical passages, and a rare gathering of all living U.S. first ladies and multiple presidents, including her 99-year-old husband Jimmy Carter. Tuesday’s (Nov. 28, 2023) tribute service at Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta falls on the second of a three-day schedule of public events celebrating the former first lady and global humanitarian who died at the age of 96. Jimmy Carter’s participation has been a day-to-day decision because of his own frail health. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will attend. They are longtime friends of the Carters. Country music stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood will sing.
NOVEMBER 27, 2023:
AMERICUS, Ga. (AP) — Rosalynn Carter embarked on her final journey Monday (Nov. 27, 2023) to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center as her family began three days of memorials for the former first lady and global humanitarian who died Nov. 19, 2023, at the age of 96.
Family including Rosalynn Carter’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren watched as her casket was placed in a hearse Monday morning outside Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in the Carters’ native Sumter County. Onlookers huddled beside the road on a breezy, chilly morning.
The motorcade stopped at Rosalynn Carter’s alma mater, the nearby Georgia Southwestern State University. The Carters’ four children — Jack, Chip, Jeff and Amy — watched as wreaths of white flowers were placed beside a statue of their mother on the campus where she founded the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving to advocate for millions of unpaid caregivers in American households.
Among several hundred well-wishers at the university service was Lyndea Brown, who said she drove from nearby Albany to pay respects to “a remarkable woman” who attended local cancer benefits and fought for rural health services.
“They were always real hometown people,” Brown said. “We don’t get presidents and first ladies like that anymore, people who have true hometown roots and understand what it’s like to grow corn and peanuts and whatever else and to struggle over health care.”
From rural south Georgia, the family motorcade began its trip of more than 140 miles (225 kilometers) to Atlanta, where Rosalynn Carter will lie in repose at The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.
The library will be open from 6 to 10 p.m., offering the most direct opportunity for the public to pay their respects during the three-day tribute. Two funerals, set for Tuesday in Atlanta and Wednesday in the Carters’ tiny hometown of Plains, are for invited guests.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, longtime friends of the Carters, lead the dignitaries expected to attend the Atlanta service. Motorcade routes will be open throughout the schedule. Rosalynn Carter’s burial Wednesday in Plains is private.
It is not known whether the former president, who is 99 and in his 10th month of hospice care, will take part in the events. Those close to his immediate family have said he will make every effort as he grieves his partner of more than 77 years.
The schedule, a product of detailed planning that involved the former first couple, reflects the range of Rosalynn Carter’s interests and impact. That includes her advocacy for better mental health treatment and the elevation of caregiving, her role as Jimmy Carter’s closest adviser and her status as matriarch of Plains and Maranatha Baptist Church, where she and the former president served in various roles after leaving the White House in 1981.
“All over the world, people are celebrating her life,” said Kim Fuller, the Carters’ niece, while teaching a Bible lesson Sunday at Maranatha. “And of course we’re coming into a week now where we’re gonna celebrate even more.”
A detailed schedule is available online. Events will be streamed and broadcast by independent media.
Some well-wishers began honoring Rosalynn Carter soon after her death, including an uptick in visitors to the Presidential Center campus.
“Mental health is more openly talked about” because of Rosalynn Carter’s work to reduce the stigma attached to the conditions, said Brendan Green, a high school guidance counselor who came from Chicago.
“She was a pioneer in that field,” Green said. “What a great legacy.”
Elizabeth Laudig, a registered nurse from Dallas, said she drove 12 hours to be in Georgia this week, starting with the wreath-laying ceremony in Americus. She said Rosalynn Carter’s emphasis on mental health and caregivers was especially inspiring to her as a nurse.
“She just quietly went about the business of trying to make the world a better place,” said Laudig, 54. “You know, she was not a showy or extravagant first lady, but she was humble, you know, kind, hardworking, and got things done for people because she cared about people.”
After the motorcade arrives in Atlanta, a brief service of repose was scheduled for 3:30 p.m. — before public access — at the Carter Presidential Center.
The campus, near downtown, includes the library and museum, and The Carter Center. The former first couple founded the center in 1982 to champion democracy, mediate international conflicts and fight disease in the developing world. Their work around the world redefined what former White House occupants can do after ceding political power.
Streets around the campus will be closed Monday. Parking and a shuttle will be available at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 435 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta.
The largest single service will be held Tuesday at Glenn Memorial Church on the Emory University campus. Emory helped the former first couple establish The Carter Center. Besides the Bidens, Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, have announced plans to attend. Other former first ladies and possibly former presidents are expected, as well.
Glenn is a Methodist congregation. The Carters married in 1946 at Plains Methodist Church, where Rosalynn Carter attended growing up. She joined her husband as a Baptist throughout their marriage.
Her final services at Maranatha will reflect their small-town Protestant roots: Church members are invited and also will eat a funeral meal with the Carter family the day of the service.
During her Sunday School hour, Fuller reminded her fellow Maranatha members that they are expected to provide dessert. “Whatever you want to bring is fine,” Fuller told them as she explained drop-off instructions. “Spread the word if you don’t mind.”
NOVEMBER 20, 2023:
ATLANTA (AP) — Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, the closest adviser to Jimmy Carter during his one term as U.S. president and their four decades thereafter as global humanitarians, has died at the age of 96.
The Carter Center said she died Sunday (Nov. 19, 2023) after living with dementia and suffering many months of declining health. The statement said she “died peacefully, with family by her side” at 2:10 p.m. at her rural Georgia home of Plains.
“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” the former president said in the statement. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”
President Joe Biden called the Carters “an incredible family because they brought so much grace to the office.”
“He had this great integrity, still does. And she did too,” Biden told reporters as he was boarding Air Force One on Sunday night after an event in Norfolk, Virginia. “God bless them.” Biden said he spoke to the family and was told that Jimmy Carter was surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
Later, the White House released a joint statement from the president and first lady Jill Biden saying that Carter inspired the nation. “She was a champion for equal rights and opportunities for women and girls; an advocate for mental health and wellness for every person; and a supporter of the often unseen and uncompensated caregivers of our children, aging loved ones, and people with disabilities,” the statement added.
Reaction from world leaders poured in throughout the day.
The Carters were married for more than 77 years, forging what they both described as a “full partnership.” Unlike many previous first ladies, Rosalynn sat in on Cabinet meetings, spoke out on controversial issues and represented her husband on foreign trips. Aides to President Carter sometimes referred to her — privately — as “co-president.”
“Rosalynn is my best friend … the perfect extension of me, probably the most influential person in my life,” Jimmy Carter told aides during their White House years, which spanned from 1977-1981.
The former president, now 99, remains at the couple’s home in Plains after entering hospice care himself in February.
Fiercely loyal and compassionate as well as politically astute, Rosalynn Carter prided herself on being an activist first lady, and no one doubted her behind-the-scenes influence. When her role in a highly publicized Cabinet shakeup became known, she was forced to declare publicly, “I am not running the government.”
Many presidential aides insisted that her political instincts were better than her husband’s — they often enlisted her support for a project before they discussed it with the president. Her iron will, contrasted with her outwardly shy demeanor and a soft Southern accent, inspired Washington reporters to call her “the Steel Magnolia.”
Both Carters said in their later years that Rosalynn had always been the more political of the two. After Jimmy Carter’s landslide defeat in 1980, it was she, not the former president, who contemplated an implausible comeback, and years later she confessed to missing their life in Washington.
Jimmy Carter trusted her so much that in 1977, only months into his term, he sent her on a mission to Latin America to tell dictators he meant what he said about denying military aid and other support to violators of human rights.
She also had strong feelings about the style of the Carter White House. The Carters did not serve hard liquor at public functions, though Rosalynn did permit U.S. wine. There were fewer evenings of ballroom dancing and more square dancing and picnics.
Throughout her husband’s political career, she chose mental health and problems of the elderly as her signature policy emphasis. When the news media didn’t cover those efforts as much as she believed was warranted, she criticized reporters for writing only about “sexy subjects.”
As honorary chairwoman of the President’s Commission on Mental Health, she once testified before a Senate subcommittee, becoming the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to address a congressional panel. She was back in Washington in 2007 to push Congress for improved mental health coverage, saying, “We’ve been working on this for so long, it finally seems to be in reach.”
She said she developed her interest in mental health during her husband’s campaigns for Georgia governor.
“I used to come home and say to Jimmy, ‘Why are people telling me their problems?’ And he said, ‘Because you may be the only person they’ll ever see who may be close to someone who can help them,’” she explained.
After Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, Rosalynn Carter seemed more visibly devastated than her husband. She initially had little interest in returning to the small town of Plains, where they both were born, married and spent most of their lives.
“I was hesitant, not at all sure that I could be happy here after the dazzle of the White House and the years of stimulating political battles,” she wrote in her 1984 autobiography, “First Lady from Plains.” But “we slowly rediscovered the satisfaction of a life we had left long before.”
After leaving Washington, Jimmy and Rosalynn co-founded The Carter Center in Atlanta to continue their work. She chaired the center’s annual symposium on mental health issues and raised funds for efforts to aid the mentally ill and homeless. She also wrote “Helping Yourself Help Others,” about the challenges of caring for elderly or ailing relatives, and a sequel, “Helping Someone With Mental Illness.”
Frequently, the Carters left home on humanitarian missions, building houses with Habitat for Humanity and promoting public health and democracy across the developing world.
“I get tired,” she said of her travels. “But something so wonderful always happens. To go to a village where they have Guinea worm and go back a year or two later and there’s no Guinea worm, I mean the people dance and sing — it’s so wonderful.”
In 2015, Jimmy Carter’s doctors discovered four small tumors on his brain. The Carters feared he had weeks to live. He was treated with a drug to boost his immune system, and later announced that doctors found no remaining signs of cancer. But when they first received the news, she said she didn’t know what she was going to do.
“I depend on him when I have questions, when I’m writing speeches, anything, I consult with him,” she said.
She helped Carter recover several years later when he had hip replacement surgery at age 94 and had to learn to walk again. And she was with him earlier this year when he decided after a series of hospital stays that he would forgo further medical interventions and begin end-of-life care.
Jimmy Carter is the longest-lived U.S. president. Rosalynn Carter was the second longest-lived of the nation’s first ladies, trailing only Bess Truman, who died at age 97.
Eleanor Rosalynn Smith was born in Plains on Aug. 18, 1927, the eldest of four children. Her father died when she was young, so she took on much of the responsibility of caring for her siblings when her mother went to work part time.
She also contributed to the family income by working after school in a beauty parlor. “We were very poor and worked hard,” she once said, but she kept up her studies, graduating from high school as class valedictorian.
She soon fell in love with the brother of one of her best friends. Jimmy and Rosalynn had known each other all their lives — it was Jimmy’s mother, nurse Lillian Carter, who delivered baby Rosalynn — but he left for the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, when she was still in high school.
After a blind date, Jimmy told his mother: “That’s the girl I want to marry.” They wed in 1946, shortly after his graduation from Annapolis and Rosalynn’s graduation from Georgia Southwestern College.
Their sons were born where Jimmy Carter was stationed: John William (Jack) in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1947; James Earl III (Chip) in Honolulu in 1950; and Donnel Jeffery (Jeff) in New London, Connecticut, in 1952. Amy was born in Plains in 1967. By then, Carter was a state senator.
Navy life had provided Rosalynn her first chance to see the world. When Carter’s father, James Earl Sr., died in 1953, Jimmy Carter decided, without consulting his wife, to move the family back to Plains, where he took over the family farm. She joined him there in the day-to-day operations, keeping the books and weighing fertilizer trucks.
“We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business,” Rosalynn Carter recalled with pride in a 2021 interview with The Associated Press. “I knew more on paper about the business than he did. He would take my advice about things.”
At the height of the Carters’ political power, Lillian Carter said of her daughter-in-law: “She can do anything in the world with Jimmy, and she’s the only one. He listens to her.”
Ceremonies celebrating the life of Rosalynn Carter will take place after the Thanksgiving holiday in Atlanta and Sumter County, Georgia, the Carter Center announced Sunday evening.
The repose on Nov. 27, at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, is open to the public. A private funeral and interment will take place Nov. 29 but the services will be broadcast on TV and streamed online, the center said.
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