December 2023 — MHCE Newsletter

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12 | MHCE - News www.mhce.us DECEMBER 2023 EDITION Hawaii during the couple’s Navy years and learning to hula dance while her husband was stationed there. Jimmy Carter met his future wife only a few days after his mother delivered her. Coming from that town of about 600 — then and now — Rosalynn Carter changed lives across America and the developing world, mourners were told at her services this week. Jimmy Carter’s closest political adviser and a political force in her own right, she advocated for better mental health care and underappreciated caregivers in millions of U.S. households. Traveling overseas, she fought disease, famine and the abuse of women and girls. Even so, she never stopped being the smalltown Southerner whose cooking repertoire leaned heavily on mayonnaise and pimento cheese, Jason Carter said as he told endearing stories about his grandmother. The tributes covered the range of Rosalynn Carter’s life. Events in Atlanta reflected her grandest chapters. Mourners viewed her casket at her husband’s presidential library, steps from The Carter Center they cofounded after leaving the White House. Then she was honored at a service filled with the music of a symphony chorus, a majestic pipe organ and fellow Habitat for Humanity ambassadors Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood. President Joe Biden, former President Bill Clinton and the first ladies joined Jimmy Carter and their four children in the front row, in front of more than 1,000 congregants who wore suits, ties and dresses and filled an elegant Emory University church. The proceedings Wednesday underscored her simpler constants. The sanctuary in Plains seats fewer people than the balcony
WWW.MHCE.US Monthly Newsletter | 13 at Glenn Memorial in Atlanta. Maranatha, tucked away at the edge of Plains where the town gives way to cotton fields, has no powerful organ, instead the cross her husband made and offering plates he turned on his lathe. Some congregants wore casual attire. Yet her imprint went well beyond Plains. Whenever she heard of suffering among her friends or neighbors, she would say, “’Get me their phone numbers so that Jimmy and I can call them,’” Lowden said. But “Rosalynn Carter was someone who would look at children from Sudan or Cambodia and say ‘That’s my baby, too.’” Several speakers addressed the former first lady’s resilience, perhaps most evident when her husband was defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980. “When they lost re-election, she thought the best part of her life was over,” Josh Carter said of his grandmother. Then came The Carter Center and its work on human rights, “and she knew that was the best part of their life.” Elaine Larkin, who lives in nearby Ellaville, worked at the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers at the former first lady’s alma mater, Georgia Southwestern State University. “We had one meeting where some people kept saying ‘RAHZ-lyn,’” Larkin recalled, rolling her eyes at the common mispronunciation as she awaited the motorcade. “She just sat there and smiled. And when she got up to leave she leaned over to me and said very quietly, ‘Elaine, would you please tell them it’s ‘ROSElyn.’” After the funeral, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren walked alongside an SUV carrying Jimmy Carter as Rosalynn Carter was escorted for the last time through the town where she lived for more than 80 of her 96 years. The motorcade passed holiday lights and decorations including a photo collage in front of the downtown tree featuring the “First Lady of Plains.” Her casket, topped with a spray of mixed flowers, was driven past the old high school where she was valedictorian during World War II, Plains Baptist Church where she and the former president were once outliers arguing for racial integration and the commercial district where she became Jimmy’s indispensable partner in their peanut business. Then came the old train depot where she helped run the winning 1976 presidential campaign and Plains Methodist Church, where as an 18-yearold in 1946, she married young Navy Lt. Jimmy Carter. The route ended in what locals call “the Carter compound,” property that includes their one-story ranch house, the pond where she fished and security outposts for the Secret Service agents who protected her for 47 years. Her grave is within view of the front porch of the home where the 39th American president still lives..
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December 2023 — MHCE Newsletter

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