Rosalynn Carter, outspoken former first lady, dead at 96

ATLANTA– ATLANTA (AP) — Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, Jimmy Carter’s closest adviser during his sole term as U.S. president and his subsequent four decades as a global humanitarian, has died at the age of 96.

The Carter Center said she died Sunday after a life with dementia and many months of declining health. The statement announcing her death said she “died peacefully, with family by her side” at 2:10 p.m. at her rural home in Plains, Georgia.

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I have ever accomplished,” Carter said in the statement. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew someone loved and supported me.”

President Joe Biden called the Carters “an incredible family because they brought so much grace to the office.”

“He had great integrity and he still has that. And so did she,” Biden told reporters Sunday evening as he boarded Air Force One to leave Norfolk, Virginia. “God bless them.” Biden said he spoke to the family and was told Jimmy Carter was surrounded by his children and grandchildren.

Later, the White House released a joint statement from the president and first lady Jill Biden saying Carter inspired the nation. “She was a champion of equal rights and opportunities for women and girls; an advocate for mental health and wellness for all; and an advocate for the often invisible and uncompensated caregivers of our children, aging loved ones, and people with disabilities,” the statement said.

Responses from world leaders poured in throughout the day.

The Carters were married for more than 77 years and forged what they both describe as a “full partnership.” Unlike many previous first ladies, Rosalynn participated in cabinet meetings, spoke out on controversial issues, and represented her husband on foreign trips. President Carter’s aides sometimes referred to her privately as “co-president.”

“Rosalynn is my best friend … the perfect extension of me, probably the most influential person in my life,” Jimmy Carter told aides during their White House years, which lasted from 1977-1981.

The former president, now 99, is staying at the couple’s home in Plains after being admitted to hospice care himself in February.

Fiercely loyal, compassionate, and politically astute, Rosalynn Carter prided herself on being an activist first lady, and no one doubted her influence behind the scenes. When her role in a highly publicized Cabinet shake-up became known, she was forced to publicly declare: “I don’t run the government.”

Many presidential aides insisted that her political instincts were better than her husband’s; they often enlisted her support for a project before discussing it with the president. Her iron will, contrasted with her outwardly shy demeanor and soft Southern accent, inspired Washington reporters to dub her “the Steel Magnolia.”

Both Carters said in their later years that Rosalynn had always been the more political of the two. After Jimmy Carter’s crushing defeat in 1980, it was she, not the former president, who contemplated an unlikely comeback, and years later she confessed that she had missed their life in Washington.

Jimmy Carter trusted her so much that in 1977, just months into his term, he sent her on a mission to Latin America to tell dictators that he meant what he said about denying military aid and other support to violators of the human rights.

She also had strong feelings about the style of the Carter White House. The Carters did not serve liquor at public events, although Rosalynn did allow American wine. There were fewer ballroom dancing nights and more square dancing and picnics.

Throughout her husband’s political career, she has chosen mental health and the problems of the elderly as her main policy focuses. When the news media did not pay as much attention to these efforts as she thought was warranted, she criticized reporters for writing only about “sexy topics.”

As honorary chair of the President’s Commission on Mental Health, she once testified before a Senate subcommittee, becoming the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to address a congressional panel. She was back in Washington in 2007 to press Congress for better mental health coverage, saying, “We’ve been working on this for so long that it finally seems within reach.”

She said she developed her interest in mental health during her husband’s campaigns for governor of Georgia.

“I often came home and said to Jimmy, ‘Why do people tell me their problems?’ And he said, ‘Because you might be the only person they’ll ever see who’s close to someone who can help them,’” she explained.

After Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, Rosalynn Carter seemed more visibly devastated than her husband. Initially, she had little interest in returning to the small town of Plains, Georgia, where they were both born, married and spent most of their lives.

“I hesitated and was not at all sure that I could be happy here after the glare of the White House and the years of stimulating political struggle,” she wrote in her 1984 autobiography, “First Lady from Plains.” But “we slowly rediscovered the satisfaction of a life we ​​had long since left.”

After leaving Washington, Jimmy and Rosalynn co-founded The Carter Center in Atlanta to continue their work. She chaired the center’s annual symposium on mental health issues and raised money for efforts to help the mentally ill and the homeless. She also wrote “Helping Yourself Help Others,” about the challenges of caring for elderly or ill family members, and a sequel, “Helping Someone with a Mental Illness.”

Often leaving their homes for humanitarian missions, the Carters built homes with Habitat for Humanity and promoted public health and democracy in the developing world.

“I get tired,” she said of her travels. “But something miraculous always happens. To go to a village where they have the Guinea worm and to go back a year or two later and there’s no Guinea worm, I mean, the people are dancing and singing – it’s so awesome.”

In 2015, Jimmy Carter’s doctors discovered four small tumors in his brain. The Carters feared he had weeks to live. He was treated with a drug to boost his immune system and later announced that doctors had found no further signs of cancer. But when they first received the news, she said she didn’t know what she was going to do.

“I depend on him when I have questions, when I write speeches, whatever, I consult with him,” she said.

She helped Carter recover several years later when he underwent hip replacement surgery at age 94 and had to learn to walk again. And she was with him earlier this year when, after a series of hospital admissions, he decided to forego further medical interventions and begin end-of-life care.

Jimmy Carter is the longest-living American president. Rosalynn Carter was the nation’s second-longest-lived first ladies, behind only Bess Truman, who died at age 97.

Eleanor Rosalynn Smith was born in Plains on August 18, 1927, the eldest of four children. Her father died when she was young, so she took on much of the responsibility for caring for her siblings when her mother started working part-time.

She also contributed to the family income by working in a beauty salon after school. “We were very poor and worked hard,” she once said, but she continued her education and graduated from high school as class valedictorian.

She quickly fell in love with the brother of one of her best friends. Jimmy and Rosalynn had known each other all their lives — it was Jimmy’s mother, nurse Lillian Carter, who delivered baby Rosalynn — but he left for the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, while she was still in high school.

After a blind date, Jimmy told his mother, “That’s the girl I want to marry.” They married in 1946, shortly after his graduation from Annapolis and Rosalynn’s graduation from Georgia Southwestern College.

Their sons were born where Jimmy Carter was stationed: John William (Jack) in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1947; James Earl III (chip) in Honolulu in 1950; and Donnel Jeffery (Jeff) in New London, Connecticut, in 1952. Amy was born in Plains in 1967. By then, Carter was a senator.

Navy life had given Rosalynn her first chance to see the world. When Carter’s father, James Earl Sr., died in 1953, Jimmy Carter, without consulting his wife, decided to move the family back to Plains, where he took over the family farm. There she helped him with the daily work, keeping the books and weighing fertilizer trucks.

“We developed a partnership working in the agricultural supply sector,” Rosalynn Carter proudly recalled in a 2021 interview with The Associated Press. ‘On paper I knew more about the company than he did. He would take my advice on things.

At the height of the Carters’ political power, Lillian Carter said of her daughter-in-law, “She can do anything in the world with Jimmy, and she’s the only one.” He listens to her.”