By her own confession, Rosalynn Carter was distraught over her husband’s intention to leave his promising career in the Navy to rescue the family’s struggling peanut farm in Plains, Ga., after his father’s death.
“I argued. I cried. I even screamed at him,” Mrs. Carter wrote years later. “I loved our life in the Navy. I didn’t want to live in Plains. I had left there, moved on. I thought the best part of my life had ended.”
The best part was ahead, and that best was very good indeed.
Making the best of Plains, she helped see to the farm becoming profitable, which enabled Jimmy Carter to serve on the local school board, in the Georgia Senate, in the governor’s mansion and as president of the United States.
Overcoming her own shyness and trepidation about public speaking, she became his tireless surrogate campaigner, especially in the 1976 Florida Democratic primary, where his victory over Alabama’s George Wallace ended the racist influence in Democratic politics and made the nation take “Jimmy who?” seriously.
Rosalynn Carter, who died last Sunday at 96, was in her time the most visible and influential First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. The President valued her as an adviser and a surrogate, often delegating her to hold press conferences and represent him overseas, notably in confronting Latin American heads of state over authoritarian abuses.
She attended Cabinet meetings and National Security Council briefings, listening but not speaking, to advise him privately. She was indefatigable in promoting better treatment of mental illness and getting her husband to establish a presidential commission on the subject. She made the Office of First Lady an official position.
The journalist Jonathan Alter, a Jimmy Carter biographer, called her “this country’s premier champion of mental health.” After Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in 1980, he defunded her program of community health centers. She lived to see President Barack Obama restore it.
She was credited with persuading President Carter to admit more refugees from Southeast Asia after the Vietnam war, and with teaming with Betty Bumpers, the wife of Arkansas Sen. Dale Bumpers, to convince 33 legislatures to require that school children be vaccinated against common diseases.
President Carter’s advisers, it was said, wished he had paid more attention to her political instincts, which they thought were superior to his. Politicians often praise their spouses — sometimes sincerely, sometimes not. With Carter, it was genuine.
“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” he said after her death. “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.”
When it seemed that his death was imminent, he refused hospitalization rather than abandon her at their modest ranch-style house in Plains. Carter lost the nation’s highest office after one term, and it’s still debated how effective a president he was.
But there is no room for doubt that in the ensuing four decades, in the nation’s longest post- presidency, the Carters set a transcendent example of humanitarian public service.
The proof of that is that every president’s conduct after leaving office will be compared to theirs. It was a luminous example to others and an inspiration to a nation beset by public cynicism about Washington and its politicians.
Through the Carter Center in Atlanta, which they founded, they worked around the world to promote democracy, free elections and public health. The center has nearly eradicated the Guinea worm, an ugly, painful disease that blighted Africa. They worked regularly to build houses for Habitat for Humanity.
Theirs was also the longest presidential marriage, more than 77 years, a love story for all time. Alter wrote that she had saved the letters her husband had sent her while he was at sea, from as far back as 1949. She kept those letters close at hand until the day she died.
The decision to leave the Navy and return to the farm was one of the few times Jimmy Carter did not take Rosalynn’s advice.
She protested in vain when he lowered the White House thermostats to 65 during the daytime and 55 at night during a very cold winter and an energy crisis. She wanted him to run against Reagan again in 1984; he wisely decided not to and they established the Carter Center instead. It is a model for unselfish service to the nation and the world.
Rosalynn Carter’s life was a blessing for all Americans and all people.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
