December 2023 — MHCE Newsletter

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..