Rosalynn Carter sat in on Cabinet meetings and made mental health her cause
Rosalynn Carter declared she would not be a traditional first lady, and she meant it. She attended Cabinet meetings, travelled to Latin America as her husband's envoy, and spent five decades pushing for better mental health care, from Georgia's state hospitals to the Carter Center and a caregivers' institute she founded.
She was born Eleanor Rosalynn Smith in Plains, Georgia, in 1927, the eldest of four children of a mechanic and farmer and a mother who taught and sewed. The family was poor, though she said nobody around them had money either. As a girl she drew buildings and dreamed of becoming an architect. Her father died of leukaemia when she was 13, a loss she said ended her childhood, and she helped her mother raise the younger children while finishing as valedictorian of her high school.
She began dating Jimmy Carter, a fellow Plains native at the Naval Academy, in 1945 and married him in July 1946, giving up plans to study interior design. When he became governor in 1970 she chose mental health as her focus, serving on a state commission whose recommendations largely became law and touring Georgia's facilities in 1971. She also privately corrected her husband when he told reporters she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment; he publicly admitted he had been wrong about her view.
On the 1976 presidential trail she campaigned alone in 41 states, often fielding the question of who Jimmy was. In the White House from 1977 she supported his policies, joined Cabinet meetings at his invitation and represented him abroad; he regarded her as an equal partner. After his heavy defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980, the couple returned to private life.
Later years were busy rather than quiet. She worked with the Carter Center, helped the couple expand Habitat for Humanity, wrote several books and in 1987 founded the Institute for Caregivers. She and her husband received the Presidential Medal of Freedom together in 1999. She died in November 2023, after 77 years of marriage.
Source: Rosalynn Carter
