Rosalynn Carter (at right) is joined by country singers Waylon Jennings (with cigarette) and Jessi Colter during a 1980 campaign event for her husband, President Jimmy Carter. The photo, by Warren K. Leffler, is now part of the U.S. News and World Report collection at the U.S. Library of Congress.
Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady of the United States and for 77 years the wife of former President Jimmy Carter, has died at age 96. She died on November 19, two days after entering hospice care at her home in Plains, Georgia.
In May, the Carter Center announced that Rosalynn Carter had dementia, although she continued to live at home. A few months earlier, Jimmy Carter had also entered hospice care at home due to various physical ailments. He survives her, as do their four children Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy and their families.
The photo above says a lot about Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter, who really were down-home types at the same time as they were globetrotters and world citizens. Country outlaw Waylon Jennings looks like he just managed to get out the bed in his tour bus in time for this event, which was in 1980 for the doomed Carter reelection campaign.
One thing I somehow didn’t know about Rosalynn Carter was that she was a tremendous advocate for mental health and for fair, kind, and robust treatment for people with mental illnesses — “the most vulnerable among us,” as she put it in a talk at the JFK Library just five years ago.
She began doing the work in the 1970s, when Jimmy was governor of Georgia and when people with mental illnesses “were just sedated and knew nothing,” she said in the talk. “And now we realize they are human beings with hopes and dreams and thoughts just like everybody else. They want to have good lives, and we still don’t treat them that way.” Her whole interview there is well worth the read. (Hat tip to James Fallows for the link.)
Rosalynn (left) and Jimmy Carter on their wedding day in 1946. Jimmy Carter had just graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, hence the dress uniform. (Photo: Jimmy Carter Presidential Library)
Just on a lighter note, here’s a photo of Rosalynn Carter and Jimmy Carter on their wedding day of July 7, 1946. Jimmy Carter was a newly-commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy, having just graduated from Annapolis that year. He was 21 years old, and Rosalynn was 18.
The thing about Rosalynn Carter and her work for mental health is that it’s just one small part of what the Carters did together over the years. They helped build 4000 homes for Habitats for Humanity! They started the Carter Center to “wage peace and fight disease”! Under their guidance, the Carter Center has almost succeeded in eradicating the guinea worm, a parasite that afflicted 3.5 million people in 1986; last year only 22 cases were reported worldwide. Amazing.
If only all of our public servants were truly such public servants. Salute to Rosalynn Carter for a life well lived.