ATLANTA — Today marks one year since the passing of First Lady Rosalynn Carter at the age of 96, and the Carter Center has marked the day with a new tribute video.
Rosalynn Carter died on Nov. 19, 2023 at the age of 96. In the year since then, her husband former President Jimmy Carter has continued in hospice care at their home in Plains, Georgia, visiting with family, marking their anniversary and celebrating his 100th birthday.
The Carter Center noted with the video, "we remember the endless compassion and limitless vision of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter." Take a look:
Her tribute service in Atlanta was attended by President Carter, one of his few public appearances since going on hospice care in early 2023. Among the speakers at that service, on Nov. 28, 2023, was her grandson Jason Carter, the Carter Center Board of Trustees chair. He recalled her as a "cool grandma" and rock of the family.
Amy Carter, the Carters' only daughter, also read a letter Jimmy sent to Rosalynn while he was in the Navy, and their son Chip Carter spoke.
More on Rosalynn Carter and her legacy as a mental health advocate
Rosalynn Carter formed one-half of the longest presidential marriage in U.S. history and was a pillar of her husband’s presidency who forged her own independent legacy as a trailblazing mental health advocate and philanthropist.
She was a key surrogate in Jimmy Carter’s political campaigns and then a critical component of his presidency from 1977-80, essentially his closest adviser who was once described in the national media as the “second-most powerful person in the United States.”
She attended Cabinet meetings, an extraordinary level of involvement for a first lady, and was the first first lady to take up her own active office in the East Wing.
In both her political work and later philanthropic activities, mental health was her defining cause.
The story goes she was on the campaign trail with Jimmy in Atlanta during his first (unsuccessful) run to be governor of Georgia when she met a woman who was returning home from her overnight shift at a cotton mill. She asked the woman if she would be going home to rest, and the woman, looking exhausted, said that she would not be resting – she was on her way back to care for her daughter, who had mental health conditions.
It was an impression that stayed with Rosalynn.
She has said she later found Jimmy at a campaign event and, still preoccupied with her encounter, slipped in with him to shake hands. He asked her what she was doing, and she responded only with: “I want to know what you’re going to do about mental health issues.”
That moment sparked a decades-long crusade to fight mental health stigmas and improve mental health services in the U.S. and across the globe.
Her first role as an advocate was in Georgia – as a member of the Governor’s Commission to Improve Services for the Mentally and Emotionally Handicapped. During her time on that commission, a number of recommendations to improve Georgia’s mental health services became state law.
As chair of the President’s Commission on Mental Health, Rosalynn spearheaded work for a group that, according to Columbia University’s Global Mental Health Programs, was the first presidential commission focused on mental health.
After leaving the White House, the couple founded The Carter Center and Rosalynn made mental health the focus of her efforts through the organization, creating and chairing the center’s Mental Health Task Force and later establishing the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.
In a 1977 New York Times interview, shortly after President Carter took office, the new first lady spoke about mental health as a priority and about destigmatizing mental health issues in terms ahead of their time.
Carter said she wanted “every person who needs mental health care to be able to receive it close to his home and to remove the stigma from mental health care so people will be free to talk about it and seek help.”
“It's been taboo for so long to admit you had a mental health problem,” she said.
Across the decades, her efforts on behalf of mental health bore legislative fruit – she became just the second first lady to testify before Congress in a successful push for the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, and she again testified in 2007 on behalf of the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, which became law the next year.
In a 1977 New York Times interview, shortly after President Carter took office, the new first lady spoke about mental health as a priority and about destigmatizing mental health issues in terms ahead of their time.
Carter said she wanted “every person who needs mental health care to be able to receive it close to his home and to remove the stigma from mental health care so people will be free to talk about it and seek help.”
“It's been taboo for so long to admit you had a mental health problem,” she said.
Across the decades, her efforts on behalf of mental health bore legislative fruit – she became just the second first lady to testify before Congress in a successful push for the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, and she again testified in 2007 on behalf of the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, which became law the next year.
Among the dozens of honors she received for her advocacy over roughly half a century, in 2021, Carter was celebrated by the World Health Organization with the Award for Global Health.
In 2010, she wrote her second book on mental health, “Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis,” continuing a lifetime of promoting the message of empathy.
“Stigma is the main thing. It hurts people so bad. It embarrasses them. Humiliates them. It leads to discrimination and curtails funding for programs,” Rosalynn told the San Francisco Chronicle that year. “We have come a long way, but we have a long way to go.”