AP PHOTOS: Rosalynn Carter's farewell tracing her 96 years from Plains to the world and back
PLAINS, Ga. — Former US first lady Rosalynn Carter was remembered this week with three days of public ceremonies and tributes that spanned the breadth of her long life, from her roots in Plains, Georgia, to the White House and around the world to four decades of work as a global humanitarian.
Associated Press photojournalists documented the tributes along the way.
They captured the spectacle that comes with funerals for a resident of the White House, as well as hometown worship for a first lady who lived for more than 80 of her 96 years in the same city where she was born. They recorded services that reflected her deeply held Christian faith, which her pastor said always took her “beyond the walls” of the church. And they reflected the grief of her 99-year-old husband, Jimmy Carter. The 39th president left hospice care to attend public memorials in Atlanta and Plains. He was visibly debilitated and frail, but determined to lead the nation in saying goodbye to his wife of more than 77 years.
The tribute began Monday in Americus, Georgia, with a wreath-laying ceremony on the campus of Georgia Southwestern State University. That's where Rosalynn Carter graduated in 1946 and, after her term as first lady, founded the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers to advocate for millions of Americans caring for family members and others without adequate support.
She lay in repose Monday at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, a reflection of their tenure in Washington from 1977 to 1981, when she emerged as the most politically active first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. Her husband spent the night at The Carter Center, which they co-founded in 1982 to advocate for democracy, resolve conflict and eradicate disease in the developing world — and to allow her to continue what has been a half-century of advocacy for better mental health care. healthcare in America.
On Tuesday, she was honored in Atlanta at a ceremony that brought together all the living US first ladies, President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton. They joined the Carter family, dozens of Secret Service agents and more than a thousand other mourners for a service full of symphony choir, honor guards and a large organ.
In Plains, her intimate hometown funeral was held Wednesday at her beloved Maranatha Baptist Church, which the Carters joined when they returned to Georgia after his presidential defeat in 1980. Her family, including Jimmy, wore leis. It was a tribute to how she enjoyed her time in Hawaii during her husband's Navy years and how she loved learning how to hula dance while she was there; her Secret Service code name was 'Dancer'.
In a slow-moving motorcade, she was escorted one last time through Plains, past the high school where she had retired during World War II, through the commercial district where she became Jimmy Carter's indispensable partner in the peanut business, past the old train depot. where she helped manage his 1976 presidential campaign.
She was buried in a private ceremony on the family property, overlooking the porch of the house they built before Carter's first political campaign in 1962.
– Associated Press national politics reporter Bill Barrow