Rosalynn Carter was memorialised as a matriarch who felt most comfortable among the impoverished and vulnerable as she was mourned by a rare gathering of all living US first ladies and multiple presidents, including her 99-year-old husband Jimmy Carter.
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 on November 19 at home in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 96.
Tributes began on 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.
Their other sons, Jeff and Jack, flanked them.
“He never wants to be very far from her,” Carter Centre chief executive 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.
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 emphasising 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 centre 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.
“Their partnership and love story was a defining feature of her life,” Amy Carter said.
Ms Cade described Rosalynn Carter’s time as first lady as “really just one chapter in a life that was about caring for others”.
Ms Woodruff recalled Rosalynn Carter lobbying legislators, 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 Egypt’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,” Ms Woodruff said.
It was Jimmy Carter’s first public appearance since entering hospice care, other than a brief ride with Rosalynn in September’s Plains Peanut Festival parade, where they were visible only through the open windows of a Secret Service vehicle.
He was with his wife during her final hours, but did not appear publicly during earlier events at Rosalynn Carter’s alma mater, Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, and at his presidential library.
The Carters married in 1946 and became the longest-married presidential couple in US history.
Jimmy Carter is the longest-lived president; Rosalynn Carter was the second-longest lived first lady, trailing only Bess Truman, who died aged 97.
Praised for half a century of advocacy for better mental health care in America and reducing stigmas attached to mental illness, she brought attention to the tens of millions of people who work as unpaid caregivers in US households, and was acclaimed for how integral she was to her husband’s political rise and in his terms as Georgia’s governor and the 39th president.
Chip Carter recalled how his mother got him into rehab for drug and alcohol addiction.
“My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever met,” he said.
“And pretty to look at, too.”
“She was so down to earth, y’all, it was amazing,” Jason Carter said as he shared family stories, including the time when his grandmother made pimento sandwiches and handed them out on a Delta flight.
“She loved people,” he said.
“She was a cool grandma.”
Rosalynn Carter’s funeral will take place on Wednesday in Plains, with an invitation-only service at Maranatha Baptist Church, where the Carters have been members since returning to Georgia after his presidency.
She will be buried after a private graveside service on a plot the couple will share, visible from the front porch of the home they built before Jimmy Carter’s first political campaign in 1962.
