Rosalynn Carter was the active other half of Jimmy’s presidency

She might have been First Lady, but hers was a simple life of faith and dedication to her family and those in need.

Former US president Jimmy Carter kisses wife Rosalynn Carter in 2002. Picture: AFP

Rosalynn Carter was America’s first lady in the late 1970s and the most politically active holder of that title since Eleanor Roosevelt. Before, during and after her White House years she campaigned tirelessly for mental health and other worthy causes, but hers is above all a remarkable love story.

It is the story of her 77-year marriage to her childhood sweetheart, Jimmy Carter – a marriage that took her from a tiny town in the backwoods of Georgia to Washington, that survived triumphs and disasters, and that ultimately earned its partners near-universal admiration for its strength and longevity. “The best thing I ever did was marry Rosa,” the former holder of the world’s most powerful office said in his old age. “That was the pinnacle of my life.”

Jimmy Carter could remember the day his wife was born in 1927. His mother, Lillian Carter, was a nurse and helped to deliver Rosalynn, whose parents were neighbours of the Carters in Plains, Georgia. Lillian took her son to see the new baby the next day.

Rosalynn had a tough upbringing. Her father, Wilburn Edgar Smith, a car mechanic, died of leukaemia when she was 13. She had to look after her three younger siblings and widowed grandfather while her mother, Allethea Murray Smith, worked as a seamstress during the Depression, and Rosalynn took a job herself to make ends meet, shampooing hair in a beauty parlour. She nonetheless flourished at Plains High School, graduating as her year’s valedictorian and May queen, but subsequently had to leave Georgia Southwestern College for lack of money.

When she was 17, Jimmy Carter, her best friend’s brother, came back from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, dressed in his crisp white midshipman’s uniform. After a whirlwind romance, they married the following year.

For the next seven years she followed him to naval bases around the country. Though reared a Methodist, she became a Baptist like her husband and they started a family. Of their three sons, Jack became a lawyer, Chip a charity executive and Jeff a cartographer.

In 1953 Jimmy’s father, James Earl Carter Sr, died. Despite Rosalynn’s strenuous opposition, Jimmy left the navy and moved back to Plains to take over the struggling family peanut business.

“I cried. I even screamed at him,” she wrote later. “It was the most serious argument of our marriage. I thought the best part of my life had ended.” She was wrong. The best part was just beginning.

Back in the small southern town where she was born, Rosalynn Carter raised her children and kept the books. She endured a strained relationship with her strong-willed mother-in-law, known to all as Miss Lillian, but as the civil rights movement gathered momentum, Jimmy was sucked into politics and she followed in his slipstream.

In 1963 her husband became a state senator. In 1966 he ran unsuccessfully for governor, with Rosalynn Carter overcoming her reticence to campaign vigorously for him, and in 1970 he ran again and won. The Carters moved to the gubernatorial mansion in Atlanta with a fourth child, Amy – who is now an art historian – in tow and Rosalynn sat on her husband’s Commission to Improve Services for the Mentally and Emotionally Handicapped.

Jimmy Carter’s term ended in 1975. The family returned to Plains, but only temporarily. He had already announced his longshot bid for the presidency and throughout 1976 Rosalynn Carter campaigned tirelessly – and solo – for her husband. She visited 41 states on his behalf, addressed rallies, appeared on TV shows and raised funds. After two days of rising at 4.30am to watch her greet factory workers, and staying up past midnight, one of her media entourage dubbed her the “steel magnolia”. It was a nickname that captured the inner strength of a petite, attractive, soft-spoken woman and it stuck.

Jimmy Carter won an improbable victory. He was inaugurated on a sunny day in January 1977, seven months before Rosalynn’s 50th birthday. Breaking with tradition, and eager to make the presidency less imperial, the Carters stopped their armoured limousine on the way to the White House and walked hand-in-hand along Pennsylvania Avenue.

Across the next four years Rosa­lynn Carter would prove an unconventional first lady. She and her husband led relatively modest and private lives in the White House. They did not throw glamorous parties and they did not serve spirits. They ate simply: when she asked a White House chef if he could prepare southern food, he replied: “Yes, ma’am, we’ve been fixing that kind of food for the servants for a long time.” They employed Mary Fitzpatrick, a woman from Georgia who had been wrongly convicted of murder, to look after Amy.

Rosalynn was not interested in fashion and wore the same dress to the inaugural parties in Washington that she had worn to the governor’s inaugural ball in Georgia six years earlier. Her one concession to vanity was a nip-and-tuck around her eyes.

She was the first to have her own office in the East Wing, employing about 18 staff. She had a business lunch with her husband each week, sat in on cabinet meetings and received regular policy briefings on foreign and domestic issues. “Aside from a few highly secret and sensitive security matters, she knew all that was going on,” Jimmy Carter wrote in his memoirs. She attended foreign funerals, inaugurations and other ceremonial occasions on her husband’s behalf and served as his envoy on trips to Latin America and elsewhere.

An active honorary chairwoman of the President’s Commission on Mental Health, she testified before a Senate committee to promote the Mental Health System Bill, which was enacted in 1980. She also lobbied for an Equal Rights Amendment to the constitution to end discrimination on grounds of sex. As her husband’s closest adviser, she would argue about his policies in private though she never disagreed in public.

“Rosa­lynn had strong opinions of her own, and never gave up on one of her ideas as long as there was any hope of it being accepted,” Jimmy Carter noted wryly. She had a say on appointments, including his choice of Walter Mondale for vice-president. She helped her husband to write speeches, advised him on strategy and helped gauge the mood of the electorate. “I am much more political than Jimmy and was more concerned about popularity and winning re-election,” she wrote later.

As Jimmy Carter began to lose popularity, she persuaded him to employ a new communications chief, Gerald Rafshoon, and to invite senior members of the media to off-the-record dinners at the White House. She was, Jimmy Carter said, a “very equal partner” and a “perfect extension of myself”.

The Carters took a speed reading course and learnt Spanish together, and last thing at night read a passage from the Bible in Spanish. For relaxation they swam, jogged, played tennis and watched films, and paid regular visits to Camp David.

As the 1980 campaign neared, Jimmy Carter’s presidency was engulfed by the capture of 52 American diplomats and civilians in post-revolutionary Iran. Unable or unwilling to leave the White House, he had Rosalynn and Mondale campaign on his behalf as he sought first to beat off a Democratic primary challenge from senator Edward Kennedy, then to defeat former Republican governor of California Ronald Reagan.

Chief Justice Warren Burger administers the oath of office to Jimmy Carter as the 39th President of the US on January 20, 1977 as Rosalynn Carter looks on. Picture: AFP

He succeeded in his first goal but not the second. The dramatic final hours of his presidency were spent striving to secure the hos­tages’ release after 444 days of captivity. Rosalynn Carter was by his side, urging him to rest when he could, warning him of the Reagans’ imminent arrival for the inauguration, telling him to dress. Iran’s theocracy finally released the hostages less than two hours after Reagan was sworn in.

Rosalynn was depressed and embittered by her husband’s defeat after a single term and blamed Iran. “The hostages are what defeated us. Damn, damn Khomeini,” she said, exclaiming: “I don’t understand why God wanted us to lose this election.”

But her rage passed. The Carters moved back to Plains and built themselves a new home. She wrote her memoir, First Lady from Plains, to pay off some of the debts they had accrued during their White House years. In 1982 Rosalynn helped her husband to set up the Carter Centre in Atlanta, participated in many of its programs to promote human rights and alleviate suffering around the world, and chaired its mental health taskforce.

She established the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving at Georgia Southwestern University and launched a nationwide campaign to increase childhood immunisations. Once a year she and her husband spent a week helping Habitat for Humanity build homes for the poor. In 1999 the Carters were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour.

The couple continued their good works well into their 90s. They never lost their humility or desire to serve. Every Sunday, when in Plains, they attended the Maranatha Baptist Church. Jimmy Carter would preach, and after the service the couple patiently would pose for pictures with tourists.

More recently both had been receiving hospice care at home, in Jimmy Carter’s case since February this year. Their last public appearance came in September when the couple delighted hometown fans by riding in a vehicle through the Plains Peanut Festival, in a nod to their past as peanut farmers.

Only a few weeks earlier, Rosalynn Carter had enjoyed a quiet 96th birthday with the husband who had been by her side for 77 years.

Rosalynn Carter. Former US first lady. Born Plains, Georgia, August 18, 1927; died Plains, November 19, aged 96.

The Times