There’s no downplaying the fact that Jimmy Carter didn’t look like the man that Americans had long come to know when he attended two memorial services this week for his wife, Rosalynn Carter, who died Nov. 19 at age 96.
Gone was the energetic, nonagenarian former president, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian and recent builder of homes for Habitat for Humanity. In that man’s place was a gaunt, frail, 99-year-old man who arrived at both services in a wheelchair. At Tuesday’s service in Atlanta, his face was pale, his mouth hung open and he did not make eye contact with many mourners, the New York Times reported.
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“He’s coming to the end, and he’s very, very physically diminished,” his grandson, Jason Carter, told the New York Times in an interview before the service at the Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church at Emory University. “But I think he was proud and happy that he was there for her till the very end, and he wasn’t going to miss this for anything.”
Both Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter also were never ones “to sugarcoat difficulties,” as Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan wrote in one of several profiles of the couple, who had been married 77 years. The unvarnished “Crisis of Confidence” speech Jimmy Carter gave in 1979 when he was president, about the challenges faced by the United States, was often cited as a reason he lost his bid for a second term in office to Ronald Reagan in 1980, Jordan said. Rosalynn Carter also was an early advocate for more frank public discussions about mental health issues.
Jordan said the couple didn’t lose their forthrightness when it came to aging. Family members said the Carters felt no need to hide the effects of growing old. “While many famous people guard their image and hide frailty, the Carters did not,” Jordan also wrote.
Last February, Jimmy Carter entered home hospice care after several brief hospital stays. The Carter Center announced that he would spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.
While no illness was disclosed, he had overcome serious health problems in recent years, Jordan reported. In 2015, he was diagnosed with melanoma that he said had spread to his liver and brain. But later that year, his doctors said he had defied the odds, and Carter announced he was cancer-free following treatment. But in 2019, he suffered a fall that left him with a black eye and stitches, the New York Times also reported. A short time later, he fractured his pelvis.
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After Carter’s first fall, he still managed to show up to build houses in Nashville for Habitat for Humanity; after the second injury, he continued to teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. On Wednesday, Carter returned to the church to join family and friends at a private funeral service for Rosalynn.
In May, the Carter Center announced that Rosalynn had been diagnosed with dementia, and friends and associates told the Washington Post that the health of both Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter had been in decline in recent months. She was using a walker to get around, and he needed a wheelchair.
Thereafter, the couple retreated from public view — except in late September. For Plains’ annual Peanut Festival, the couple rode together in the back of a black Chevy Suburban, driven by a Secret Service agent, Jordan reported.
People in the crowd could see the couple in the backseat. Jimmy Carter held his wife’s hand, while she waved to the crowd. People clearly were “stunned” by Jimmy Carter’s frail appearance, Jordan reported.
“There were gasps, and then cheers,” Jordan reported. Then came waves of applause that only stopped when a “Happy Birthday” serenade began to honor Carter, who was about to turn 99. He had already lived longer than any other former president.
In September, the couple’s son, James Earl “Chip” Carter III, told Jordan that his father had his good days and bad days, and he was frustrated he could no longer swim.
“He told me he has been successful at everything in life, but he can’t figure out how to die,” Chip Carter said.
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Jordan reported last week that Jimmy Carter remains mentally aware and at times is remarkably sharp, but he was unable to speak at Tuesday’s service. Some family members had expressed concern about Carter traveling 164 miles from his home in Plains to attend Tuesday’s tribute service in Atlanta, the New York Times said.
His decision to make such a journey in his condition “was, to some, shocking,” the New York Times said. But his family also recognized the importance of his presence, and he had an honored place in the front row of the church. He sat with two of his successors as president, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, and all living first ladies, Jill Biden, Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton.
“Come hell or high water, Jimmy Carter was going to use his inner resources to be there,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told the New York Times, adding that the 39th president “has the most intense willpower of any person I’ve ever known.”
Tuesday’s service was televised, so many Americans got their first glimpse of Carter in some time, at least since he entered hospice. But it’s not likely that the famously stubborn and tenacious former president would be concerned if some people were stunned by how visibly frail he has become. He wanted to be there for Rosalynn, as family and friends said.
“He has been this moral rock for so many people, but she really was that rock for him,” Jason Carter said.
At the service, the Carters’ daughter, Amy Carter, found a way to speak for her father and to describe his enduring love for her mother. Amy Carter read a love letter that he wrote to Rosalynn while he served in the Navy more than seven decades ago.
“My darling, every time I have ever been away from you, I have been thrilled when I returned to discover just how wonderful you are,” Carter wrote in the letter. “While I’m away, I try to convince myself that you really are not, could not be, as sweet and beautiful as I remember. But when I see you, I fall in love with you all over again.”
“Goodbye, darling,” Carter went on. “Until tomorrow, Jimmy.”
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
