Former US President Jimmy Carter, 99, made a rare public appearance Tuesday to attend a memorial service for his beloved wife Rosalynn, together with his successors Joe Biden and Bill Clinton and all five living first women.
A frail-looking individual Carter temporarily left hospice care to attend the funeral at an Atlanta church, arriving in a wheelchair with a blanket embroidered with a picture of his wife’s face on his lap.
Carter did not speak, but the couple’s children and grandkids recognized Rosalynn Carter’s “life well lived” as a humanitarian and mental health advocate who reinvented the role of the modern First Lady.
“My mother was the glue that held our family together,” said their son James “Chip” Carter, who kissed his father on the head and laid his hand on his mother’s flower-covered coffin.
Biden and First Lady Jill Biden shared a “special moment with President Carter” before the service, according to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who was on Air Force One.
Rosalynn Carter died on November 19, aged 96, in the couple’s Plains, Georgia, home, after a 77-year marriage that established a political legend in the United States.


‘In love’
Fighting back tears, their daughter Amy Lynn Carter read out a love letter her father wrote to her mother while he was in the US navy three quarters of a century ago.
“My mum spent most of her life in love with my dad,” she told the congregation at the Glenn Memorial Church.
Biden and First Lady Jill Biden sat in the first row of the chapel, having backed Carter before the Democrat’s 1976 election victory.
Former President Bill Clinton, who served from 1993 to 2001, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were present, as were previous first ladies Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, and Laura Bush.
Her favorite music was played during the service, including a rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine” by husband-and-wife US country music artists Tricia Yearwood and Garth Brooks.
The large turnout demonstrated Rosalynn Carter’s popularity in the United States.
Rosalynn Carter’s reputation as an active first lady who championed then-little-discussed topics of mental health only expanded after she and her husband left the White House.
Jimmy Carter was widely regarded as a failure after losing his reelection effort to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
However, the pair went on to establish a global network of charitable activities and received praise for their modest living.


‘Equal partner’
Chip Carter praised his mother for assisting him in overcoming his own drug and alcohol addiction, saying she made a “positive difference in people’s lives.”
Joe and Jill Biden took off from Washington early Tuesday, giving the Clintons and Michelle Obama a ride on the presidential plane Air Force One, according to the White House. Melania Trump did not board the same plane, according to the report.
The more intimate funeral on Wednesday in Plains will certainly draw attention to Jimmy Carter’s health, who is the oldest living US ex-president in US history and has been in hospice care for 10 months.
All living presidents normally attend presidential funeral services — Carter attended the George W. Bush memorial in Washington in 2018 — offering a moment of national unity.
With Biden and Donald Trump expected to square up in a replay of their bitter 2020 election campaign in 2024, even the solemn occasion of Carter’s funeral will be studied for signs of tension.
The Carters were the longest-married presidential couple, having married in 1946.
When she died, Jimmy Carter said in a statement that she’d been “my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished.”
Jimmy Carter’s wife was at the core of his campaigns throughout his long political career. And, from 1977 to 1981, Rosalynn Carter strove to elevate the prominence of the first lady’s position, including attending cabinet sessions.
She met Jimmy Carter in 1945, while he was on leave from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.