Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, whose family had just announced that she was in hospice care at home last Friday, has passed away at age 96.

The hospice announcement and the news of her passing are not unexpected. Rosalynn Carter had been battling dementia – which was announced this last May. As Mrs. Carter had advocated for mental health issues since her time as First Lady, the Carter Center used the announcement to “destigmatize” the diagnosis.

“We recognize, as she did more than half a century ago, that stigma is often a barrier that keeps individuals and their families from seeking and getting much-needed support,” the statement continued. “We hope sharing our family’s news will increase important conversations at kitchen tables and in doctor’s offices around the country.”

Rosalynn Carter has long been outspoken about the importance of lifting up caregivers as well, telling a Senate committee in 2011: “Our nation is in need of a fundamental shift in how it values and recognizes caregivers especially in view of the rapidly escalating number of older adults, many of whom live with chronic illness and disabilities.”

“As the founder of the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers, Mrs. Carter often noted that there are only four kinds of people in this world: those who have been caregivers; those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers,” The Carter Center said on Tuesday. “The universality of caregiving is clear in our family, and we are experiencing the joy and the challenges of this journey.”

As so many people know, dementia is a long and emotionally painful way to say good bye to a loved one, and the announcement that Rosalynn Carter had entered into hospice care at home, alongside her husband, is no surprise. And honestly, it should be a shock to no one that Mrs. Carter has passed.

Our co-founder, former U.S. First Lady Rosalynn Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia.

For more information: https://t.co/82bHoZQvkk pic.twitter.com/2exvnQdtab

— The Carter Center (@CarterCenter) November 19, 2023

Eleanor Rosalynn Smith was born in Plains on Aug. 18, 1927, the eldest of four children. Her father died when she was young, so she took on much of the responsibility of caring for her siblings when her mother went to work part time.

She also contributed to the family income by working after school in a beauty parlor. “We were very poor and worked hard,” she once said, but she kept up her studies, graduating from high school as class valedictorian.

She soon fell in love with the brother of one of her best friends. Jimmy and Rosalynn had known each other all their lives — it was Jimmy’s mother, nurse Lillian Carter, who delivered baby Rosalynn — but he left for the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, when she was still in high school.

After a blind date, Jimmy told his mother: “That’s the girl I want to marry.” They wed in 1946, shortly after his graduation from Annapolis and Rosalynn’s graduation from Georgia Southwestern College.

What is more than a little surprising is that Jimmy Carter has outlived expectations after he entered hospice care back in February, after battling liver cancer for several years at this point. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were married for over 77 years, a record not likely to be matched by another presidential couple anytime soon. Jimmy Carter is now 99, and with the passing of his wife, it would be no surprise if he passes himself in the coming days. Not just because of his own cancer and hospice care, but also because it is not an uncommon occurrence to have long-married couples pass away within days of each other. After so many years of being together, the thought of living without the other is just too great a challenge to bear.

The Bidens were attending a “Friendsgiving” event in Norfolk, Virginia, with naval servicemembers and families when the news broke. Jill Biden made the announcement to the crowd, with Joe looking on.
https://twitter.com/virginianpilot/status/1726346614187434204
It’s a good thing Jill was present and was able to improvise her comments to include the news about Rosalynn Carter. Just imagine if Joe had been making that announcement. We might have all died of cringe, and he probably would have volunteered himself to give the euology at her funeral. After all, he’s already said he’s doing Jimmy Carter’s euology.

Rosalynn Carter will be remembered as a devoted wife and family matriarch, but she was much more politically minded than Jimmy was.

Both Carters said in their later years that Rosalynn had always been the more political of the two. After Jimmy Carter’s landslide defeat in 1980, it was she, not the former president, who contemplated an implausible comeback, and years later she confessed to missing their life in Washington.

Throughout her husband’s political career, she chose mental health and problems of the elderly as her signature policy emphasis. When the news media didn’t cover those efforts as much as she believed was warranted, she criticized reporters for writing only about “sexy subjects.”

As honorary chairwoman of the President’s Commission on Mental Health, she once testified before a Senate subcommittee, becoming the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to address a congressional panel. She was back in Washington in 2007 to push Congress for improved mental health coverage, saying, “We’ve been working on this for so long, it finally seems to be in reach.”

She said she developed her interest in mental health during her husband’s campaigns for Georgia governor.

“I used to come home and say to Jimmy, ‘Why are people telling me their problems?’ And he said, ‘Because you may be the only person they’ll ever see who may be close to someone who can help them,’” she explained.

After Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, Rosalynn Carter seemed more visibly devastated than her husband. She initially had little interest in returning to the small town of Plains, Georgia, where they both were born, married and spent most of their lives.

“I was hesitant, not at all sure that I could be happy here after the dazzle of the White House and the years of stimulating political battles,” she wrote in her 1984 autobiography, “First Lady from Plains.” But “we slowly rediscovered the satisfaction of a life we had left long before.”

In another day and age, Rosalynn Carter might have run for political office herself. But the Carters threw themselves into charitable work instead, which will end up being their primary legacy, along with their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

We here at Victory Girls express our deepest condolences to the Carter family.

Featured image: former First Lady Rosalynn Carter in 2016, via the LBJ Library Flickr account, cropped, public domain