Rosalynn Carter: ‘The Best Part’ Ended. Then Came the White House.

Highlights from her autobiography

Tucker Lieberman

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Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter waving to a crowd from the top of the steps of an airplane as they depart Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in 1981. He’s wearing a dark suit. She’s wearing a soft white coat with a matching belt wrapped around it. They’re smiling.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter departing Reagan’s 1981 inauguration. NARA & DVIDS Public Domain Archive

Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady of the United States, died today at age 96. In her 1984 autobiography, First Lady from Plains, she recalled:

“With Jimmy’s [1977] inaugural, we hoped to set a tone for an open, inclusive administration, one that would focus on all kinds of people…We planned a simple inauguration, a ‘people’s’ inauguration, so that everyone who came would find something fun or meaningful to do.”

She understood that “we are answerable to all the people — and indebted to so many whom we will try forever and never be able to repay.”

She Grew Up in Plains, Georgia

Rosalynn was born in 1927 to Frances Allethea “Allie” Murray and Wilburn Edgar Smith. She grew up in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where her mother grew flowers like “zinnias, petunias, hollyhocks, [and] crepe myrtle” as well as “fig, pear, pecan and wild cherry [trees], and pomegranate bushes.” Young Rosalynn once tumbled out of the sitting room window into a rosebush. They had a milk cow, pigs and chickens. She learned to sew. There was “no movie theater, no library, no recreation center,” but she read “Heidi and Hans Brinker and Robinson Crusoe.

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Tucker Lieberman

Cult classic. Author of the novel "Most Famous Short Film of All Time." Editor for Prism & Pen and Identity Current. tuckerlieberman.com