Former US First Lady Rosalynn Carter has died: how Americans will remember her

Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady of the United States, died on November 19 at the age of 96. The publication told in more detail CNN.

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“Rosalynn Carter passed away peacefully surrounded by her family at her home in Plains, Georgia,” the Carter Center said in a statement.

“Rosalynn has been my partner in everything I have ever accomplished,” said her husband, 39th President of the United States Jimmy Carter. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. While Rosalynn was in this world, I always knew that someone loved and supported me."

On November 17, the Carter Center announced that the former first lady of the United States was admitted to hospice care. She was diagnosed with dementia in May.

The 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, served one term, from 1977 to 1981. The Americans did not re-elect him for a second term, preferring Ronald Reagan. The Carters reimagined and revolutionized the post-presidency. Since leaving the White House, they have worked on issues of peace and human rights around the world. To achieve this, the couple created the Carter Center, a non-governmental organization whose goal is to “maintain peace, fight disease and promote hope.”

Since leaving the White House, the couple have traveled to trouble spots around the world, including Cuba, Sudan and North Korea, observing elections and working to eradicate dracunculiasis and other neglected tropical diseases. Thanks to this work, Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

"The Carter Center is a shared heritage," said the Carters' friend Jill Stuckey, leader of the Maranatha Baptist Church where both Carters attended and where Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school.

Funeral services for Rosalynn Carter will take place next week. The public will be able to pay their respects at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum on Monday, November 27th. A memorial service for Carter will be held for family and invited friends later this week at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, according to schedule, published by the Carter Center.

On the subject: Jimmy Carter defeated invincible cancer: his treatment marked the beginning of a revolution in cancer therapy

President Joe Biden, speaking to reporters, praised the Carter family. “This is truly an incredible family because they brought so much grace to the office of the president,” he said.

43rd US President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush paid tribute to Rosalynn Carter, calling her "a woman of dignity and strength."

“Rosalynn Carter was President Carter's most loyal lieutenant, and their partnership was a wonderful example of loyalty and loyalty. She leaves behind an important legacy in her work to destigmatize mental health issues. We join our fellow citizens in expressing our condolences to President Carter and their family,” the couple said in a joint statement.

The 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, highlighted the Carters' long marriage in a statement on Sunday, praising her many years of service to the country.

“Melania and I, along with all Americans, mourn the death of Rosalynn Carter. "She was a dedicated First Lady, a great humanitarian, a mental health advocate, and the beloved wife of her husband, President Carter," Trump wrote.

Rosalynn Carter's most enduring legacy will be her efforts to reduce the stigma of people with mental illness and her fight for parity and access to mental health treatment. She also dedicated her time to the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Nursing at her alma mater, Georgia Southwestern University.

In 1999, then-President Bill Clinton awarded both Carters the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He said they had "done more good for more people in more places than any other couple on Earth."

steel magnolia

Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter are what many call true American history and a true lifelong partnership.

In 2015, when the 39th president announced that he had brain cancer, he was asked what accomplishment he was most proud of. He answered without hesitation that it was marrying Rosalynn: “This is the pinnacle of my life.”

Another time, he shared the secret of his lasting marriage.

“Rosalynn became the basis of all my enjoyment of life. Firstly, the best thing is to choose the right woman, which is what I did. And secondly, we give each other the opportunity to do our own thing,” he told Jake Tapper in July 2015 on CNN's The Lead.

Rosalynn grew up in a not very wealthy family. Her mother was a dressmaker and her father was a car mechanic. He died of cancer when Rosalynn was 13 years old. She helped raise her younger siblings and considered her father's death to be the end of her childhood.

The Carters met through Jimmy's sister, Ruth, who was Rosalynn's closest friend. When Rosalynn saw Carter's photo on Ruth's bedroom wall, she thought, "This is the most handsome man I've ever seen." She even asked Ruth if she could take his photo home with her.

Jimmy and Rosalynn, both staunch Baptists, met at a church meeting and soon began dating. They married shortly after the future president graduated from the Naval Academy, when she was 18 and he was 21.

The Carters quickly had three children: John William (“Jack”) in Norfolk, a year after their wedding; James Earl (“Chip”) III - almost three years after the wedding, in Hawaii; and Donnell Jeffrey (“Jeff”) - in 1952 in New London (Connecticut). Their only daughter, Amy Lynn, was born in 1967, a year after Carter lost his first campaign for governor of Georgia.

Jimmy Carter was accepted into the elite nuclear submarine training program, but after his father's death, he abandoned duty in Schenectady, New York, to return to the Plains in 1953 to tend the family farm. He decided to move his family without asking Rosalynn's opinion. Rosalynn was so furious that she refused to talk to him the entire trip south.

After this, Jimmy Carter said that when making all important decisions, he consults with his wife.

The press subsequently nicknamed her “Steel Magnolia,” which she was not offended by, once declaring in an interview that “Steel is tough, but magnolia is Southern.” At the beginning of her husband's political career in the 1960s, Rosalynn was naturally shy. But by the time he announced his presidential campaign in December 1974, she was already an experienced politician herself.

Describing her transformation from housewife to political partner, Carter aide Stuart Eizenstat said, "This shy woman has blossomed in the most remarkable way."

Soon she began numbering the president's jokes so that he would not repeat them in the same group. She even began taking classes on remembering faces and names and typing thank-you notes to people her husband met during the campaign. She stayed up until the early hours of the morning working on her speeches.

First Lady of the Plains

Carter ran for president as an outsider seeking to distance himself from the paranoia and cynicism of President Richard Nixon. It was campaigned for by a group of Georgia volunteers known as the Walnut Brigade.

Rosalynn hit the road energetically, and when she arrived in a small town, she would look for the highest antenna and head there - to the local television and radio stations to offer to give them interviews. In her memoirs, she writes that some of the small stations with a small number of employees had no idea who Jimmy Carter was.

Rosalynn came prepared, with a list of five or six questions she wanted to ask. Nine times out of ten, she said, radio stations used the questions she suggested.

“I got my point across,” she writes in her memoirs.

During the 18-month presidential campaign, she visited 105 communities in Iowa and spent 75 days in Florida supporting her husband.

“My nervousness began to fade when I realized that people seemed excited to meet me, although I still had problems with a dry throat and an occasional shaky voice during interviews or speaking engagements,” she writes in her memoir.

Carter won with just 51% of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes, defeating President Gerald Ford, who assumed the presidency following Nixon's resignation in 1974.

The Carters ignored safety concerns and broke with tradition by choosing to walk hand in hand with their daughter Amy down Pennsylvania Avenue after the inauguration ceremony. It was part of their shared desire to connect with the people and move away from what they saw as the imperial Nixon presidency.

Rosalynn even wore the same gold-embroidered sleeveless coat over the blue chiffon dress she wore to her husband's 1971 inauguration as governor to his 1977 presidential inauguration gala. It was created by Mary Matiz for Jimme, and she purchased it from a store in Americus, Georgia.

As a youth, she admired then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, an influential world leader who championed issues such as civil rights and poverty. Once in the White House, Rosalynn helped transform the First Lady's office and became the first to hire a chief of staff whose government salary and rank was equal to the president's chief of staff.

She became the first lady to serve in the East Wing. Before her, first ladies worked from an office on the second or third floors of the White House at the family's private residence. Under her tenure, the number of staff positions in the East Wing increased by almost 20%. However, her ambitious approach to her duties has drawn criticism, particularly her controversial decision to attend cabinet meetings of department heads.

As First Lady, she fought for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have amended the Constitution to prohibit sex discrimination in civil rights.

Stephen Hochman, who has worked with the Carters since 1981 and is director of research at the Carter Center, says that over the years Rosalynn has not been shy about publicly disagreeing with her husband. During his speeches, the president liked to tell listeners that one of his elementary school teachers told her students that “any child can become president.”

“Mrs. Carter corrected him,” Hochman recalled in an interview. She said: “No, she never said that. She said any boy can become president."

In her memoirs, Rosalynn recalls having lunch with her husband every Wednesday in the Oval Office, similar to how the vice president lunches weekly with the president. This ritual arose because Rosalynn had pressing topics to discuss, including personal finances, children, and issues she cared deeply about, including mental health.

She talked to mothers about how high fuel prices were affecting their family budgets, met with children in disadvantaged schools and wanted to bring these issues to his attention.

Once he suggested hosting weekly lunches, she began organizing those conversations, filing important notes in a brown leather folder. The folder sat on the table in her bedroom, and she pasted notes into it throughout the week. By the time she took it out for lunch on Wednesday, it was already completely full.

In a statement Sunday, former First Lady Michelle Obama emphasized that Rosalynn Carter understood that the role of First Lady is "so much determined by the passions and aspirations of the person who occupies it" and said that "she reminded me to make the role of First Lady my own." like she did."

“Today, Barack and I join the rest of the world in honoring the remarkable legacy of a first lady, philanthropist and activist who dedicated her life to lifting others up,” Michelle Obama added.

Mental Health Crusade

Rosalynn Carter's main topic was mental health. When she worked on her husband's gubernatorial campaign in 1970, she was overwhelmed by the number of people who asked her what she would do for a relative suffering from mental illness.

“One day, when Jimmy was speaking at a rally, I stood in line with everyone else to shake his hand,” she recalled decades later in an interview with the Carter Center. “He saw who I was, grinned and asked: “What are you doing here?” “I came to find out what you are going to do about mental health when you become governor,” I replied.”

She had a distant cousin with mental illness, and remembers running and hiding when she heard him walking down the streets of their small town singing loudly.

“He probably only wanted friendship and recognition, but he was different, and when I heard him, my impulse was to run,” the former first lady writes in her memoirs.

The experience left such an impression on her that she devoted much of her time in the White House to advocating for better care for people with mental illness. As Georgia's first lady, she helped move treatment to community mental health centers and, while in the White House, helped her husband create the President's Commission on Mental Health.

On the day the commission was announced, Rosalynn Carter told the press that she had just received a memo stating that the Justice Department prohibits the president from appointing a close relative, such as a spouse, to a civilian position. Until now, she had planned to chair the committee.

“However, there is no problem with appointing an honorary chairman,” she said to laughter from reporters. “So I will be a very active chairman emeritus.”

In 1979, she became the second first lady to testify before Congress (Eleanor Roosevelt was the first) when she spoke about the need for mental health reform.

“Throughout her long and remarkable life, she was a steadfast voice for the overlooked and underrepresented,” former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a joint statement. “Thanks to her advocacy for mental health, more people are living with better care and less stigma.”

As First Lady, she made sure to arrive at the family's private quarters to meet 9-year-old daughter Amy by 16 p.m. on school days, and they dined together by 00:18 p.m. most days. Amy became the first presidential child to attend public school since Theodore Roosevelt's son.

"I'm a much more political person than Jimmy"

At the White House, Rosalynn urged her husband to delay making controversial decisions until he was re-elected. She frankly admitted: “I am much more political than Jimmy, and I was more concerned about issues of popularity and winning re-election.”

She got her husband to fire the head of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Joe Califano. According to longtime Carter family friend and White House aide Jerry Rafshoon, she became angry with Califano over the anti-smoking campaign, fearing it would damage Carter's reputation in tobacco-producing North Carolina.

“I wanted Jimmy to fire Joe Califano,” she writes in her memoirs. “And the reasons were purely political.”

She opposed Carter's Rose Garden strategy of not campaigning against his 1980 Democratic rival, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, but of remaining in the White House and negotiating the release of American hostages in Iran.

She also disagreed with Carter's decision to ban the sale of alcohol at White House social events, although wine and punch were eventually served there. She said the perception that unaffiliated Southern Baptists were in the White House created "a stereotype that we have never gotten rid of."

She was sent to Central and South America to convey a serious message about human rights. At first, leaders and the press were skeptical about the first lady's important political trip, but over time they realized that she had a direct connection with the president.

She brought home tangible achievements: Ecuador committed to sign and ratify the American Convention on Human Rights; Peru's military leader vowed to give up power (four years later, Rosalynn attended the inauguration of Peru's democratically elected president); The President of Colombia sought to advance negotiations on the Panama Canal.

Rafshun recalls that it was Rosalynn who proposed the Middle East peace talks at Camp David, which became her husband's crowning achievement as president. She wanted the talks to take place there because Camp David is located in a quiet and secluded area in the mountains of Maryland. During the 13-day summit at Camp David, Rosalynn took nearly 200 typed pages of notes. However, all the accomplishments of Carter's presidency were ultimately overshadowed by the 444-day Iran Hostage Crisis, when revolutionary students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took more than 60 Americans hostage.

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The bulk of the 1980 campaign fell on Rosalynn's shoulders as Jimmy Carter decided to remain in the White House to deal with the crisis. She contacted the campaign several times a day, and when she couldn't talk to her husband, she spoke with Carter's national security adviser, the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, who discussed how to handle the crisis.

“I kept her informed because I knew that she would discuss these issues with the president,” Brzezinski said in an interview.

Her biggest regret in life is that her husband lost re-election in 1980.

“I would like people to know that we were right, that what Jimmy Carter did was best for our country, and that people made a mistake by not voting for him,” she said in her memoir.

Carter Center

Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter had four children, 12 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren. After leaving the White House in 1981, the Carters returned to the Plains and began the longest and most ambitious post-presidency in American history.

With the exception of Harry and Bess Truman, the Carters are the only president and first lady to return to their hometown after World War II. After her return, Rosalynn worked to revitalize the working-class neighborhood, renovating the local hotel and planting a butterfly garden.

She and her husband were active members of Maranatha Baptist Church, where she served as a deacon. But perhaps best known is their humanitarian work at the Carter Center, to which they devoted 51 weeks of the year (the remaining week was spent working for Habitat for Humanity).

“The Carter Center staff mourns the passing of our founder, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, whose compassion, strength and leadership inspired us all,” the organization said in a statement. “For more than 50 years, Mrs. Carter has been a tireless advocate for people living with mental illness, championing practices and policy reforms to create parity between mental and physical illnesses in Georgia, the United States and around the world.”

In a 2016 interview, Rosalynn reflected on the nearly four decades since she left Washington.

“I miss Jimmy in the Oval Office taking care of our country,” she said. “I never felt as safe as I did when he was there.” I still have a pulpit to discuss issues I enjoy, and since he was president, I have unlimited options. It's a good life."

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