Former first lady Rosalynn Carter (née Eleanor Rosalynn Smith)—wife of Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States—has died at the age of 96.
According to a statement released by the Carter Center, Rosalynn Carter passed away peacefully at her home in Plains, Georgia, with family by her side. (She had recently moved into hospice care after being diagnosed with dementia earlier this year.) Married in 1946, shortly after Jimmy Carter’s graduation from the United States Naval Academy, the Carters were the longest-wed presidential couple in US history.
During her time at the White House, from 1977 to 1981, Rosalynn Carter became known as a committed humanitarian and fierce advocate for mental health, helping to pass the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 and later creating and chairing the Carter Center’s Mental Health Task Force. She also entered Washington at the height of the women’s liberation movement and lobbied for the Equal Rights Amendment, besides pushing for women to participate at all levels of government.
Among her husband’s most trusted confidantes, Rosalynn Carter attended many of President Carter’s cabinet meetings and traveled abroad to meet with various heads of state, including to Latin American nations, where she was often deployed as the president’s personal envoy. She would also sit in on daily National Security Council briefings at the White House. “There’s just never been a first lady with any more impact than Rosalynn,” Robert Strauss, President Carter’s ambassador at large for Middle East negotiations, told The New York Times in 1979.
“I was more a political partner than a political wife,” Rosalynn Carter added in her memoir, First Lady From Plains, published in 1984. (She would publish several books after the White House years, including three about mental health.)
So too did Rosalynn Carter wield her influence on the White House’s decor: “Carter is the first First Lady to make a major effort to bring the 20th century to the White House interior design,” The Washington Post reported approvingly in 1977. Her additions included important examples of “American pottery and glassware, wrought iron napkin rings, honeysuckle and white oak baskets filled with cornshuck and woodshaving flowers, and favors of handmade books,” according to the Post. So too did she have a distinctive approach to entertaining, the Post reported, favoring “white wine instead of hard liquor, classical music instead of nightclub humor, and open houses for the handicapped and the aged as well as politicians and potentates.” Rosalynn Carter especially loved an elaborate holiday display, dressing the White House’s Christmas trees with things like nut pods and Victorian dolls.
In 1980, after Jimmy Carter lost his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan, he and Rosalynn Carter traveled the world in support of various human rights and health programs, helping to build more than 4,000 houses across more than a dozen countries with Habitat for Humanity. She also founded and served as president of the board of the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving at Georgia Southwestern State University, her alma mater.
For their service through the Carter Center, established in 1982 to help “wage peace, fight disease and build hope,” both Carters were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999 by Bill Clinton, who said that the couple had “done more good things for more people in more places than any other couple on Earth.”
Rosalynn Carter is survived by her husband; her four children, Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren. “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” former president Carter said in a release. “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.”
Ceremonies celebrating Rosalynn Carter’s life will take place from Monday, November 27, through Wednesday, November 29, in Atlanta and Sumter County, Georgia. Members of the public will be able to pay their respects at the repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, as well as view the motorcade.
Below, the world pays tribute to the former first lady.
