Jimmy Carter asked family to leave to enjoy final moments with wife Rosalynn (2024)

In a poignant moment of love former president Jimmy Carter asked his family to leave the room so he could be alone with his wife in her dying moments.

It was a fitting way for the former First Lady to pass, as the couple had been together for 77 years through thick an thin. The wheelchair-bound statesman, 99, who is being cared for in a hospice made the request as his beloved Rossalyn passed away at their home in Georgia.

His son Chip, aka James E. Carter III, said the family were present, but the former president asked for the precious moment. Chip said: "My dad told her he loved her and thanked her for all the wonderful things she had done. Then he asked us to leave so he could be alone with her." He then spent the next half-hour holding hands with her.

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Prior to her death Rossalyn and Jimmy had managed to snatch another precious moment when they were placed feet-to-feet at each other's hospital beds the day before she died. Unfortunately, when Rossalyn wakened on Sunday morning, she could no longer speak and was pronounced dead at 2.10pm.

Son Chip told the Washington Post: "Tears were coming out of his eyes. Dad told me several times over the last nine months that he had always thought he would outlive mom and protect her until she passed, but that now he wasn't sure that was going to happen – and that upset him. But he stayed alive. We all told him how proud we were of his relationship with her and of how he looked after her."

Since then, the ailing president has continued to eat but has been quiet and has found it hard to speak. Chip added that, depending on his health, his father plans to attend Rossalyn's funeral next Wednesday, where every living First Lady is invited, including Melania Trump. He said: "My mother was a gracious person and she would treat everybody with respect, including a former first lady."

President Biden, Vice President Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff are also scheduled to attend and pay their respects to the longest-married couple in US presidential history. The couple 'met' when Jimmy was just three and Rosalynn was a newborn. They went on to celebrate their 77th wedding anniversary on July 7 this year.

Jimmy and Rosalynn's parents were neighbors and Jimmy's mother, Bessie Lillian Carter, helped deliver Rosalynn. The pair grew up in Plains, Georgia and Jimmy met Rosalynn when she was just a day old. The young First Lady-to-be became friends with Jimmy's sister Ruth.

After returning home prior to his last year of college and after a proposed union with another girl had faded, he met the 17-year-old Rosalynn and asked for a date at the movies and he told writers Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas for their book What Makes A Marriage Last: "I just felt compatible with her, she was beautiful and innocent, and there was a resonance. We rode in the rumble seat of a Ford pick-up – Ruth [Jimmy's sister] and her boyfriend in the front – and I kissed her on that first date. I remember that vividly."

The 20-year-old Jimmy was attending the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland when they first dated. He later told his mom she was the one for him and their marriage took place a year later, when Rossalyn was 18.

Just weeks before Jimmy graduated from the Naval academy, Jimmy and Rosalynn tied the knot on July 7, 1946, at Plains Methodist Church in their hometown. The newlyweds moved to Norfolk, Virginia, shortly after their nuptials for the first of many Naval assignments that saw the Carters posted in California, Hawaii, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts.

He celebrated that enduring love in a poem from his 1995 book Always a Reckoning, writing: "I'd pay to sit behind her, blind to what was on the screen, and watch the image flicker on her hair." And it didn't take long for the enamoured 20-year-old to work out Rosalynn was the one, so he proposed. She rejected him the first time, but he won her heart the following February.

Their union faced the challenges of Navy deployments, a presidential campaign and his subsequent tumultuous time in office. But after that spell as the Commander-in-Chief, Jimmy was completely devoted to his wife and they took part in a number of humanitarian projects together, helping construct or renovate more than 4,300 affordable homes across the world – one of the greatest charitable achievements of any past president.

The couple had four children, and 25 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In 2018, their grandson Jeremy died of a suspected heart attack at the age of 28. Jimmy told People in 2015 that marrying her was the "best thing I ever did", describing their partnership as the "pinnacle" of his life.

They welcomed their first child John 'Jack' William Carter on July 3, 1947, in Portsmouth, Virginia. Jack later served in the Vietnam War and ran for Senate in 2006. Their second son, James 'Chip' Earl Carter, was born April 12, 1950, in Honolulu and their third son Donnel 'Jeff' Jeffrey Carter was born in New London, Connecticut, in August two years later. Their fourth child and only daughter, Amy Lynn, was born October 1967 in the couple's hometown Plains, Georgia, as he ventured into politics.

After the death of Jimmy's father James Earl Carter Sr at the age of 58, from pancreatic cancer in 1953, the 33-year-old left the Navy and took on the family's peanut farm, and that's where they had their first real crisis as Jimmy had decided to "uproot" the family, and the former president said his wife didn't speak to him for the entire drive from Schenectady, New York, to Plains and Rosalynn said that she felt "resentful" about the move, which led indirectly to his rise to the top of US politics.

Rosalynn told the Associated Press: "We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics. I knew more on paper about the business than he did. He would take my advice about things."

Jimmy was elected to the Georgia State Senate on November 5, 1962, following an unsuccessful run for the US Senate. He won the Georgia state governor election on November 3, 1970. He then won the US presidential election on November 2, 1976, thanks in part to Rosalynn's tireless campaigning, visiting 40 states and earning her the title of Jimmy's "secret weapon".

Rosalynn was devastated when Jimmy lost his re-election campaign to Ronald Reagan on November 4, 1980, with Jimmy recalling that she actually took the defeat harder than he did. He said: "I searched for good things about not being re-elected, to ease her pain. 'I was just 56 years old', I told her, and she was just 53, so we had at least 25 years of life ahead of us. That's when The Carter Center was born. It has been a wonderful challenge."

What helped the marriage stay on solid ground was their differing interests. Rossalyn said: "I'd say space [is the secret to a lasting marriage]. One of the hardest times was when we came home from the White House. It was the first time we'd been together in the house all day every day. So, I got my office in what was a bedroom, and his is in what was the garage."

Jimmy Carter asked family to leave to enjoy final moments with wife Rosalynn (2024)
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