Jimmy Carter set to lead presidents, first ladies in mourning and celebrating Rosalynn Carter
ATLANTA– ATLANTA (AP) — Rosalynn Carter will be remembered Tuesday with classical music and beloved hymns, some of her favorite Bible passages and a rare gathering of all living U.S. first ladies and several presidents, including her 99-year-old husband Jimmy Carter.
The funeral at Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta falls on the second of a three-day schedule of public events honoring the former first lady and global humanitarian who died at home in Plains, Georgia, on November 19 at the age of 96. The tributes began Monday in Sumter County, the Carters’ hometown, and continued in Atlanta as she lay in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, longtime friends of the Carters, lead the list of dignitaries joining the former widowed president in Atlanta. Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, along with former first ladies Melania Trump, Michelle Obama and Laura Bush, will pay their respects, as will Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and his wife Marty Kemp. Former presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush were invited but will not attend.
Jimmy Carter’s participation in the events is a day-to-day question; he is 10 months into hospice home care. The Carter Center confirmed its plans to attend the Tuesday service. It will be his first public appearance since September, when he and Rosalynn Carter rode together in the Plains Peanut Festival parade, visible only through open windows in a Secret Service vehicle. Jimmy Carter, who was with his wife during her final hours, did not appear in public Monday during a public motorcade and wreath-laying ceremony at Rosalynn Carter’s alma mater, Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus.
The Carters married in 1946. Their more than 77 years together made them the longest married presidential couple in American history.
“My grandmother was not only a partner to my grandfather, but a force in her own right,” said Jason Carter, who will be among Tuesday’s speakers.
Rosalynn Carter is being praised for her half-century of advocating for better mental health care in America and reducing the stigma attached to mental illness. She drew attention to the tens of millions of people who work as unpaid caregivers in American households. And she has gained new fame for how important she was to her husband’s political rise and to his office as Georgia’s governor and 39th president.
Jason Carter, himself a former senator and onetime Democratic candidate for governor, called her “the best politician in the family,” a distinction Jimmy Carter never disputed.
“My wife is much more political,” the former president told The Associated Press in 2021.
The Carters, perhaps thanks more to him than she, never settled comfortably into Washington’s power circles, even after winning the White House. They later found themselves on the fringes of the unofficial “Presidents Club,” which has made friends with former White House residents who once operated as rivals and gathered publicly — in whole or in part — for inaugurations and funerals.
Biden, who plans to eulogize Jimmy Carter at his state funeral when the time comes, is unquestionably the friendliest ally Carter has had in the Oval Office since he left Washington in 1981. But Carter, who lost reelection by a landslide to Ronald Reagan, received a cool reception from his previous Democratic successors, Clinton and Barack Obama, as both men tried to avoid perceived political failure. According to some people around her, Rosalynn Carter was not happy with that treatment.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter confirmed they voted for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries in Georgia. Jimmy Carter also brought criticism to some of his successors for their foreign and military policies, especially George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The Carters had perhaps the wildest relationship with Trump. Jimmy Carter joined Trump in his willingness to talk to isolationist and authoritarian North Korea. But he also suggested that Trump’s 2016 election was illegitimate. Trump responded by calling Carter “the worst” of all American presidents. He amended the charge while campaigning for the 2024 Republican nomination, telling the audience that “Jimmy Carter is the luckiest man in the world” because Biden has usurped the dubious distinction. Trump did not announce the joke until November 18, the day after Jason Carter announced that his grandmother had entered end-of-life care at home.
Trump’s absence Tuesday will ensure no awkward meetings with the Carter family or with Biden, as the two men appear to be on track for a rematch of the 2020 general election. For Melania Trump, it will be a rare public appearance; she has remained largely absent from her husband’s bid for a comeback.
The Carters became close to their 1976 opponents, Gerald and Betty Ford, after that campaign. Jimmy Carter said he had a mostly strong relationship with President George HW Bush, another Republican. But the Carters outlived both Fords, the elder Bush and Barbara Bush.
Jimmy Carter is the longest-lived president; Rosalynn Carter was the second-longest living first lady, behind only Bess Truman, who died at age 97.
The service Tuesday will feature music from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and country music legends Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, friends of the Carters through their work with Habitat for Humanity.
Rosalynn Carter’s final services will take place Wednesday in Plains, with an invitation-only service at Maranatha Baptist Church, where the Carters have been members since returning to Plains after his presidency. She will be buried after a private graveside service on a plot the couple will share, visible from the porch of the house they built before Jimmy Carter’s first political campaign in 1962.