Rosalyn, Jimmy Carter’s visionary wife who dreamed bigger than a farm in Georgia

On November 19, 2023, 96-year-old Rosalyn Carter whispered a final goodbye to Jimmy at their home in Plains, East Georgia. With the seal of the 39th President of the USA. . Between them they had overcome many challenges and won as many political battles. “Rosalyn was my complete partner in everything I accomplished,” Jimmy Carter said at the time of his death First ladyto his “Iron Magnolia,” as it would later be called, that the politician became a tenant of the White House, freeing himself from his fate as a “peanut farmer” in deep Georgia.

A question of inheritance

From the first seconds of her existence, the fate of Rosaline was connected with the fate of Jimmy Carter. It must be said that it was the latter’s mother, then the nurse, who gave birth to his future bride in the heat of the summer night of 1927. The latter’s parents, Frances Murray, a teacher and seamstress, and Edgar Smith, a mechanic, bus driver and farmer, according to Cormac O’Brien’s work, The Secret Lives of First Ladies – are close to the Carter clan, who reside not far away in this rural and remote village.During their youth, Rosaline and Jimmy frolicked side by side before actually noticing each other, seeing each other, and sharing their first kiss outside a movie theater one evening in 1945. : At 18, young Rosalyn, who attended Plains High School, is trying to get her diploma. At Southwestern College in Georgia, he is a Naval Academy student. “I never let a boy kiss me on the first date,” she wrote years later, referring to her husband.

But after that it passes very quickly. A year later, the couple married, then in 1947 gave birth to their first child, John. James, Jeffrey and Amy came next. But if Rosaline nurtures the maternal instinct. she is the eldest sister of four children and only had to take on a lot of responsibility after the death of her father at the age of 13, she does not necessarily dream of the life of a nanny and fantasizes about escaping to other horizons; Especially since, with Jimmy serving in the United States Navy, her little family moved several times to Virginia, Hawaii, and Connecticut again. Rosaline was devastated when her husband announced his resignation in 1953 to take over the family farm and develop the peanut plantation. in their rural Georgia home. “I cried, I argued and even yelled at him,” she says in his memoirs. First Lady of the Plains (1984).

When his father dies, Jimmy takes over his ancestral farm, the inheritance and his son’s responsibilities, he has to think about. feeling, while putting their pieces in the political field. After a few years of work in the early 1960s, Jimmy Carter was elected Senator, Rosalind. greeting the Georgians with a satisfied look. “He gave me great advice and encouragement when I needed it. As long as he was there, I always knew that someone loved me and supported me,” she said.

Benevolent First Lady

But the latter will remain in the shadows. Today, she is even recognized as the first female president to reinvent the role of first lady, until then metaphorical.Aware of mental health issues, she became involved in activities and initiatives on the subject over the years before being appointed to the Mentally Handicapped Commission in 1971. I wanted to bring mental illness and emotional disorders out of the closet,” he told Jimmy Carter in 1977 as the 39th president of the United States at the time of her election, the press dubbed her “Iron Magnolia,” referring to her chiaroscuro face, mixing gentleness and determination.

During her time in the White House, Rosalyn Carter then counseled, protected, counseled, and whispered in the ear of her husband, who was the cornerstone of major policy issues and decisions. In his first year in office, the latter even sent her on a solo diplomatic tour of Latin America. The president’s wife, who then works in a country that promotes women’s liberation, becomes a new symbol of power and change in 1979. Magazine The time elevates him to the rank of “the second most powerful person in the United States”. However, she does not want to overshadow her husband and intends to preserve her autonomy. Because of this, he volunteered at an Atlanta hospital and became the honorary president of the Georgia Special Olympics, a sports competition dedicated to mentally disabled children or adults.

“In addition to being a loving mother and an extraordinary first lady, my mother was a great humanitarian,” her son James Chips Carter will declare in a press release upon her death in 2023. His life of service and compassion was an example to all Americans. “He will be greatly missed not only by our family, but also by the many people who now benefit from better mental health care and better access to resources for caregivers.”

If Rosalyn left her first lady status in 1981 and was removed after her husband’s term ended, her peers still agree many years later that she was gone, so could Jimmy Carter, an indelible mark on a person. the politics of his country. Based on his initiatives, he remained president of the Friendship Force international cultural exchange program until 2002 and authored several works, his autobiography. The first lady of the plain, but also Everything to get (1987) and Within our reach. end the mental health crisis (2010) He died in 2023 at the age of 96. At his funeral in Atlanta, the first five living American ladies gathered that he was an important figure in his country. All in black, Jill Biden, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump sat together in the front row of his hometown’s small church to mourn the first. , but above all the death of the great lady. .