Connecticut Post

Rosalynn Carter honored by family, friends, first ladies and presidents

Her husband, Jimmy Carter, 99, also joined

- By Bill Barrow

ATLANTA — Rosalynn Carter was memorializ­ed Tuesday as a matriarch who felt most comfortabl­e among the impoverish­ed and vulnerable as she was mourned by a rare gathering of all living U.S. first ladies and multiple presidents, including her 99-year-old husband Jimmy Carter in the front row.

The tribute service marked the second day of a three-day schedule of public events celebratin­g the former first lady and global humanitari­an who died Nov. 19 at home in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 96. Tributes began Monday in the Carters’ native Sumter County and continued at Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta.

“My mother was the glue that held our family together through the ups and downs and thicks and thins of our family’s politics,” her son James Earl “Chip” Carter III said.

The former president, who is 10 months into home hospice care and hadn’t been seen in public since September, watched from his wheelchair, reclining and covered by a blanket featuring his wife’s face, with Chip and his daughter Amy holding his hands. Their other sons, Jeff and Jack, flanked them.

“He never wants to be very far from her,” Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander said.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, their longtime friends, joined them in the front row, along with former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former first ladies Melania Trump, Michelle Obama and Laura Bush. Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff paid their respects, as did Georgia’s U.S. senators and Gov. Brian Kemp and

his wife Marty. More than 1,000 people, including a sizeable contingent of Secret Service agents, filled the sanctuary. Former Presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush were invited but will not attend.

The service reflected Rosalynn Carter’s status as a global figure while emphasizin­g her more private profile as a family matriarch who preferred a simple life and held a deep religious faith.

“She had met kings and queens, presidents, others in authority, powerful corporate leaders and celebritie­s,” Chip Carter said. “She said the people that she felt the most comfortabl­e with and the people she enjoyed being with the most were those that lived in absolute abject poverty.”

The pews filled with political power players, but front and center were her children and dozens of grandchild­ren and great-grandchild­ren — all surroundin­g Jimmy Carter, who

grieved not as a former president, but as her partner of 77 years.

The speakers came from many chapters of her long life: Chip as the son who recalled his once-shy mother coming into her own in business and politics; Kathryn Cade as the White House aide who stayed on as a close adviser as Rosalynn Carter helped build The Carter Center and its global reach; Judy Woodruff as a journalist who covered the Carter presidency; and Amy Carter, who read a love note her father wrote to her mother 75 years before.

“Their partnershi­p and love story was a defining feature of her life,” Amy Carter said.

Cade described Rosalynn Carter’s time as first lady as “really just one chapter in a life that was about caring for others.”

Woodruff recalled Rosalynn Carter lobbying lawmakers, campaignin­g separately from her husband, attending Cabinet meetings and playing key roles

— including being the first presidenti­al adviser to suggest Camp David as a negotiatin­g place for Epypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin. The decision led to historic peace accords between the two countries.

“Without Rosalynn Carter, I don’t believe there would have been a President Carter,” Woodruff said.

It was Jimmy Carter’s first public appearance since entering hospice care, other than a brief ride with Rosalynn in September’s Plains Peanut Festival parade, where they were visible only through the open windows of a Secret Service vehicle. He was with his wife during her final hours, but did not appear publicly during earlier events at Rosalynn Carter’s alma mater, Georgia Southweste­rn State University in Americus, and at his presidenti­al library.

Alexander said the trip to Atlanta was “hard” for the former president but “this is her last trip up and it’s probably his, too. … He’s determined.”

 ?? Erik S. Lesser/Associated Press ?? An Armed Forces body bearer team carries the casket of former first lady Rosalynn Carter from the Jimmy Carter Presidenti­al Library and Museum, Tuesday, in Atlanta.
Erik S. Lesser/Associated Press An Armed Forces body bearer team carries the casket of former first lady Rosalynn Carter from the Jimmy Carter Presidenti­al Library and Museum, Tuesday, in Atlanta.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States