Former US First Lady Carter Dies At 96 (Worthy News-Focus)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – Ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter was mourning Sunday after his longtime wife, former First Lady Rosalyn Carter, a devoted advocate for mental health who played a vital role in an Israel-Egypt peace treaty, died peacefully at home. She was 96.
“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” Jimmy Carter, a devoted Christian, said in an emotionally charged statement monitored by Worthy News.
During her husband’s 1976 presidential campaign, she acquired the label “steel magnolia,” a reference to her perceived soft-spoken Southern demeanor that disguised an ambitious and resolute nature.
Determined not to be relegated to a ceremonial role, she worked in the tradition of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to make herself an extension of the president and his policies.
She was the first lady to maintain an office in the East Wing of the White House and only the second, after Roosevelt, to testify at the U.S. Congress.
First Lady Carter helped write Mideast history by encouraging her husband to bring Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt together at the presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland for peace talks in 1978.
Dividing her time between Camp David and the White House, she provided support and advice as her husband brokered a historic peace agreement between the two nations, according to sources familiar with the situation.
DIPLOMATIC EXPERIENCE
She had already experience with diplomacy earlier in May and June 1977 when President Jimmy Carter dispatched his wife on a diplomatic trip to Latin America that commentators said was substantive rather than social and unprecedented for a first lady.
Her grueling trip took her to seven countries and over 12,000 miles (about 20,000 kilometers) in 13 days. Her mission was to explain American foreign policy to a part of the world that her husband believed the United States had neglected.
She engaged Central and South American government figures on issues that included human rights, beef exports, arms reduction, demilitarization, drug trafficking, and nuclear energy. After each day’s talks, she filed a report with the State Department, sources said.
At many of her meetings, she spoke in Spanish, having recently completed an intensive language course.
Responding to plunging poll numbers for the Carter White House in 1979, she suggested that her husband shake up his Cabinet and give a “crisis of confidence” speech to the nation. While Jimmy Carter never used the word, it became widely known as the “malaise” speech, The Washington Post newspaper recalled
In her memoir, “First Lady From Plains”(1984), she described herself as “much more political than Jimmy and … more concerned about popularity and winning reelection.”
She said she urged her husband “to postpone certain controversies, such as the Panama Canal treaties or some of the Mideast decisions, until his second term.”
VICTORY THIRST
She spoke repeatedly of her thirst for victory. “I don’t like to take a chance on losing,” she wrote. “I always want to win!”
In a 2018 interview with The Washington Post, the former first lady said she was more upset than her husband when he lost his 1980 reelection bid to Ronald Reagan. “I hate to lose,” she said.
Her husband lost in part because he failed to free all 52 American diplomats and citizens held hostage after a group of militarized Iranian college students who supported the Iranian Revolution took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
Despite her professional accomplishments, some abortion activists doubted First Lady Carter’s commitment to feminism.
Although she never advocated repealing Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively legalized abortion, she considered abortion objectionable on moral and religious grounds.
Her family-committed husband admired her views. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me,” he said.
The decades-long love story between Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter is one for the ages.
LONG MARRIAGE
The ailing former U.S. president, 98, who was born James Earl Carter Jr., and the former first lady, 96, who was born Eleanor Rosalynn Smith, met when Rosalynn was just one day old.
They fell in love as teenagers and tied the knot in 1946.
The longest-married couple in presidential history, the Carters, who celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary in July, share four children: sons John (also known as Jack), 76, James (also known as Chip), 73, and Donnel (also known as Jeff), 71, and daughter Amy, 55.
They also have 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, the Carter Center said.
“Besides being a loving mother and extraordinary First Lady, my mother was a great humanitarian in her own right,” Chip Carter recalled. “Her life of service and compassion was an example for all Americans.”
He stressed that she “will be sorely missed not only by our family but by the many people who have better mental health care and access to resources for caregiving today.”
In 1977, she became honorary chair of the President’s Commission on Mental Health.
HEALTH ACT
The position allowed Carter to continue her work in ending the mental crisis that she started in the U.S. state of Georgia when her husband was governor there.
She led efforts to pass the Mental Health Systems Act in 1980, which provides grants to community mental health centers. But perhaps most of all, she supported her husband during physical and emotional challenges.
That became clear when, in the twilight of their enduring love story, 99-year-old Jimmy Carter leaned on his wife once more :after announcing in February 2023 that, after a series of short hospital stays.
He had “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.”
As Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter prepared for the end, the couple had plenty of support from their many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Jason Carter, who chairs The Carter Center governing board, wrote this year: “They are at peace and – as always – their home is full of love.”
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