Rosalynn Carter's Atlanta memorial attended by Bidens, Clintons
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President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, former President Bill Clinton, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrive at Tuesday's service at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church for former First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
An Atlanta memorial service for the late first lady Rosalynn Carter on Tuesday featured a host of dignitaries, including her 99-year-old husband, former President Carter, who arrived in a wheelchair.
Driving the news: The service occurred on the campus of Emory University, where Rosalynn was a fellow in the women's studies department for decades — ahead of her funeral and interment in the Carters' hometown of Plains, Ga. on Wednesday.
- President Biden and first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and first gentleman Doug Emhoff, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were among the invited guests.
- All living former first ladies — Melania Trump, Michelle Obama and Laura Bush — also attended. The Carters' grandson Jason Carter called it a testament to the "remarkable sisterhood that you share with my grandmother."
What they're saying: One of the Carters' sons, Chip, called his mother "the glue that held our family together" and "my hero."
- Through tears, their daughter Amy read from a letter their father wrote to their mother 75 years ago while serving in the Navy: "When I see you I fall in love with you all over again."
- She called their "partnership and love story ... a defining feature of my life."
Rosalynn Carter's longtime aide and friend Kathryn Cade said the former first lady's time serving alongside her husband in the White House "was just one chapter in a life that was really devoted to caring and doing good for others" — ranging from five decades of mental health advocacy to work bringing awareness to the plight of the monarch butterfly.
- She was "one of the truly good people in this world," Cade said.
"It is remarkable how far she could see, and how far she was willing to walk," Jason Carter said of his grandmother's determination in life, including her determination to make an impact on intractable problems like disease eradication at the Carter Center.
- She learned to ski in her 60s and skied for 25 more years, he pointed out.
- He recalled his last memory of her, when she was using a cane to walk through a hospital where Jimmy was being treated. She told him, he said, "You know it's not a cane. It's a trekking pole."
Zoom in: The service featured some of Rosalynn's favorite songs and Bible passages read by her great-grand children, per the Carter Center.
- The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, David Osborne — a favorite pianist of the Carters' — and family friends Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood also performed.
Of note: The Carters and Bidens have had a decades-long friendship. In 1976, the first presidential endorsement that then-Gov. Jimmy Carter got from an elected official outside of Georgia came from a young Sen. Joe Biden.
- And in 2021, the Bidens took a detour from the campaign trail to visit the Carters in Plains.
Flashback: A motorcade on Monday traveled from Rosalynn's alma mater — Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus — to the Carter Center, where she lay in repose Monday evening.
What's next: Rosalynn now will make a final trip home to Plains.
- There will be a private funeral at their church, Maranatha Baptist, on Wednesday, followed by an interment on the grounds of the home they've owned since 1961, where they've long planned to be buried.
- "Plains is where our hearts have always been," Jimmy Carter told CSPAN in 2006.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional details throughout.
