Rosalynn Carter – A Life to Honor

Rosalynn Carter was memorialized last week, the wife of Jimmy Carter (99), 39^th President of the United States, First Lady (96) full of faith. I never met her, nor had any reason. I was a Reagan Republican, always. But hers is a life to honor.

God is not a Democrat, not a Republican. In Heaven, we wear no labels. God, as Christians understand Him, is a loving God, asks a little and a lot – that we love Him with all our heart and do all we can while we can, no more and no less.

Rosalynn Carter did that. Her first name was Eleanor, likely after FDR’s wife. She was humble, smart, and loved her husband. She was valedictorian of her high school, drawn to a Navy patriot, Jimmy. They married in 1946, the year she graduated. He adored her.

Before, during, and after the White House, caregiving, mental health, and women’s rights occupied Rosalynn Carter’s time, if not at her husband’s side or traveling for human rights. She was not interested in being the center of attention, better as a quiet force.

Jimmy Carter was a kind man but an ineffectual president. He did not grasp easily the enormity of geopolitics, except in the Middle East, where he sought peace. He did not assess the Soviet Union was evil, as Reagan did, or seek to stop it.

Nevertheless, if behind every successful man, there is a woman – Rosalynn Carter proves the point. She was more about heart than ego or self. She understood the pathos that resides in the fragility of the human condition and cared about the meek.

In Rosalynn Carter’s  time, using what she had before her, she comforted, healed, and brought peace, individually – to those suffering – and collectively, to nations.

Interestingly, while Rosalynn Carter was a partner for her husband and never stopped that, they differed on things. She gave him a run for his money, president or not.

Her father was a farmer, her mother a teacher, and she was the eldest of four, living in what objectively was poverty, yet never knowing it, so harboring no self-pity. Instead, glad for what she had, Rosalynn Carter was all about gratitude and about giving back.

In this day and age, that sounds like pablum, a self-serving narrative for the masses, easily dismissed as partisan muck, but remember, I am a Reagan Republican, worked for Reagan, and still consider him one of our greatest presidents.

Jimmy Carter’s wife was – no party affiliation needed – a good, true, and Christian person. When those among us pass on to the next life, it is well we pause to give them full appreciation for what they did while they could, Rosalynn Carter did a lot.

Of caregiving, she knew a little. Her father died when she was 13, which ended her childhood. She leaned in and helped her mother care for her three siblings, only married Jimmy Carter in 1946, after high school. Together, they had four children.

Politics came later, husband beyond he Navy. Her aim was never to be a politician’s wife, but she rose and served. She was First Lady of Georgia, then of the United States, and alone in 1976 she campaigned in some 41 states. 

Really, however, as with other First Ladies just before and just after her, Rosalynn Carter was about heart, lived to serve, protect, give, and do what she could while she could.

Of all the quotes attributed to Rosalynn Carter, two seem to bookend her life, or describe the way she saw things, why she did what she did. We do not all get the chances she got, but she did all she could with opportunities presented to her – to help others.

In 1987, years beyond the White House, focused on mental health and caregiving, Rosalynn Carter said: “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.” Somehow, in a non-partisan way, that rings true.

Then, working on mental health issues before that was popular, she suggested hope was always worth having. In 2003, she suggested hope springs eternal for a reason.

“Twenty-five years ago, we did not dream that people might someday be able actually to recover from mental illnesses. Today, it is a very real possibility…For one who has worked on mental health issues as long as I have, this is a miraculous development and an answer to my prayers.”

Here is the bottom line. Jimmy Carter was not Ronald Reagan, but politics are not everything. We live in a world where principles matter. People like me are conservative, compassionate, principled, revere Reagan’s leadership. But God is not a partisan, and Rosalynn Carter was good in ways that bear witness to what we can do if we choose. Simply put, hers was a life of service to others, one to honor.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.