Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood perform "Imagine" at memorial service | Remembering Rosalynn Carter
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Rosalynn Carter was memorialized Tuesday
Rosalynn Carter was memorialized Tuesday as a matriarch who felt most comfortable among the impoverished and vulnerable as she was mourned by a rare gathering of all living U.S. first ladies and multiple presidents, including her 99-year-old husband Jimmy Carter in the front row.
The tribute service marked the second day of a three-day schedule of public events celebrating the former first lady and global humanitarian who died Nov. 19 at home in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 96. Tributes began Monday in the Carters’ native Sumter County and continued at Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta.
“My mother was the glue that held our family together through the ups and downs and thicks and thins of our family’s politics," her son James Earl “Chip” Carter III said.
The former president, who is 10 months into home hospice care and hadn't been seen in public since September, watched from his wheelchair, reclining and covered by a blanket featuring his wife's face, with Chip and his daughter Amy holding his hands. Their other sons, Jeff and Jack, flanked them.
“He never wants to be very far from her,” Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander said
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, their longtime friends, joined them in the front row, along with former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former first ladies Melania Trump, Michelle Obama and Laura Bush. Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff paid their respects, as did Georgia's U.S. senators and Gov. Brian Kemp and his wife Marty. More than 1,000 people, including a sizeable contingent of Secret Service agents, filled the sanctuary. Former Presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush were invited but will not attend.
The service reflected Rosalynn Carter’s status as a global figure while emphasizing her more private profile as a family matriarch who preferred a simple life and held a deep religious faith.
“She had met kings and queens, presidents, others in authority, powerful corporate leaders and celebrities,” Chip Carter said. “She said the people that she felt the most comfortable with and the people she enjoyed being with the most were those that lived in absolute abject poverty.”
The pews filled with political power players, but front and center were her children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren — all surrounding Jimmy Carter, who grieved not as a former president, but as her partner of 77 years.
The speakers came from many chapters of her long life: Chip as the son who recalled his once-shy mother coming into her own in business and politics; Kathryn Cade as the White House aide who stayed on as a close adviser as Rosalynn Carter helped build The Carter Center and its global reach; Judy Woodruff as a journalist who covered the Carter presidency; and Amy Carter, who read a love note her father wrote to her mother 75 years before.
"Their partnership and love story was a defining feature of her life,” Amy Carter said.
Cade described Rosalynn Carter's time as first lady as “really just one chapter in a life that was about caring for others.”
Woodruff recalled Rosalynn Carter lobbying lawmakers, campaigning separately from her husband, attending Cabinet meetings and playing key roles — including being the first presidential adviser to suggest Camp David as a negotiating place for Epypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin. The decision led to historic peace accords between the two countries.
“Without Rosalynn Carter, I don’t believe there would have been a President Carter,” Woodruff said.
Author: BILL BARROW (Associated Press)
The tribute service marked the second day of a three-day schedule of public events celebrating the former first lady and global humanitarian who died Nov. 19 at home in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 96. Tributes began Monday in the Carters’ native Sumter County and continued at Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta.
“My mother was the glue that held our family together through the ups and downs and thicks and thins of our family’s politics," her son James Earl “Chip” Carter III said.
The former president, who is 10 months into home hospice care and hadn't been seen in public since September, watched from his wheelchair, reclining and covered by a blanket featuring his wife's face, with Chip and his daughter Amy holding his hands. Their other sons, Jeff and Jack, flanked them.
“He never wants to be very far from her,” Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander said
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, their longtime friends, joined them in the front row, along with former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former first ladies Melania Trump, Michelle Obama and Laura Bush. Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff paid their respects, as did Georgia's U.S. senators and Gov. Brian Kemp and his wife Marty. More than 1,000 people, including a sizeable contingent of Secret Service agents, filled the sanctuary. Former Presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush were invited but will not attend.
The service reflected Rosalynn Carter’s status as a global figure while emphasizing her more private profile as a family matriarch who preferred a simple life and held a deep religious faith.
“She had met kings and queens, presidents, others in authority, powerful corporate leaders and celebrities,” Chip Carter said. “She said the people that she felt the most comfortable with and the people she enjoyed being with the most were those that lived in absolute abject poverty.”
The pews filled with political power players, but front and center were her children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren — all surrounding Jimmy Carter, who grieved not as a former president, but as her partner of 77 years.
The speakers came from many chapters of her long life: Chip as the son who recalled his once-shy mother coming into her own in business and politics; Kathryn Cade as the White House aide who stayed on as a close adviser as Rosalynn Carter helped build The Carter Center and its global reach; Judy Woodruff as a journalist who covered the Carter presidency; and Amy Carter, who read a love note her father wrote to her mother 75 years before.
"Their partnership and love story was a defining feature of her life,” Amy Carter said.
Cade described Rosalynn Carter's time as first lady as “really just one chapter in a life that was about caring for others.”
Woodruff recalled Rosalynn Carter lobbying lawmakers, campaigning separately from her husband, attending Cabinet meetings and playing key roles — including being the first presidential adviser to suggest Camp David as a negotiating place for Epypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin. The decision led to historic peace accords between the two countries.
“Without Rosalynn Carter, I don’t believe there would have been a President Carter,” Woodruff said.
Author: BILL BARROW (Associated Press)
9 ماه پیش
در تاریخ 1402/09/07 منتشر شده
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