Rosalynn Carter honored by Jimmy, Bidens and admirers at Georgia memorial

ATLANTA - Margie Ryman wanted to linger, but a Secret Service agent nudged her to move along. Hundreds of mourners were waiting behind her in line to see the flower-adorned casket of Rosalynn Carter.

Everyone got a few seconds to say goodbye.

“I just needed to be in her presence,” said Ryman, a 63-year-old office manager in Atlanta, weaving through the Monday evening crowd at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, where the former first lady was lying in repose.

Those few seconds, she said, were worth braving the rush-hour traffic and chilly night air. She’d bowed her head, clasped her hands and mentally recited part of the Lord’s Prayer, which seemed like a more fitting farewell than watching a live stream of the funeral.

“She had this quiet strength,” said Ryman, who wanted to see more of that from today’s leaders. “You don’t need to be loud to be heard.”

Carter, who died at 96 on Nov. 19, is being honored this week with three days of tributes, bringing a procession of VIPs to her home state of Georgia. Attending the invitation-only service Tuesday were President Biden and his wife, Jill, Vice President Kamala Harris, former president Bill Clinton and all the living former first ladies.

All eyes, though, were on former president Jimmy Carter, who has spent the last nine months at home receiving hospice care - always by his wife’s side. Overnight, he had slept at the Carter Center, steps away from where she lay in repose. She was, he often said, his “equal partner.”

All four of their children and their 11 living grandchildren joined him at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church, which, despite the spectacle of the power players, was designed to be low-key. No world leader, past or present, was invited to speak. Instead, family members read some of Rosalynn Carter’s favorite scripture passages and shared memories.

“She told me her adventures led her to 120 countries,” her son Chip Carter told the Tuesday crowd. “She went fly-fishing all over the world, met kings and queens and presidents.” Those she enjoyed meeting most, however, were people who struggled to get by, he continued - “the poorest of the poor.”

With the next presidential election a year away and tensions boiling, the bitterness that has come to define American politics was absent. Carter’s successors - Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump - entered and left the church together. So did the current and former presidents. Outside was calm, too, as a few dozen onlookers stood along the steel blockages, hoping to catch a glimpse of the proceedings.

The sense of peace matched Carter’s energy, said Mark Rosenberg, 78, a retired public health advocate watching it all unfold near the church on Emory University’s campus.

“She was unpretentious and open and welcoming,” he said.

Before any of the well-known attendees arrived this week, admirers rushed to see Carter’s motorcade at each stop of its journey, waving signs broadcasting thanks and love. Crowds formed at the hospital when the hearse carrying her body departed Monday morning. Later, at Carter’s alma mater, Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, students laid wreaths of white flowers by a bronze statue of the former first lady perched on a bench.

“I always felt like she was looking out for the nation, but always looking out for us, too,” said Emma Hall, a 74-year-old retired school paraprofessional in the lineup of fans from Carter’s tiny hometown, Plains.

Monday evening was the public’s biggest chance to pay respects to a first lady who remains beloved four decades after leaving the White House.

Some were history fanatics. Some were politics buffs. Others didn’t pay much attention to that stuff, yet said they felt compelled to be there, to come together. Mourners included Republicans and Democrats, preteens and retirees, locals and tourists. The same word kept coming up to describe Carter: “Approachable.” Here they were, invited to step within three feet of a woman who had been among the most powerful on Earth.

Teachers, nurses, accountants and soldiers crammed into shuttle buses outside St. Luke’s Episcopal Church that ferried people to the repose site at the Carter Center for four straight hours. Anyone could step aboard one of the Leisure Time charters lining Peachtree Street. Signs taped to the windshields read: CARTER GUEST.

“It’s just so her,” said one of those guests, Amanda Schell, a 57-year-old life coach. “She was so real.”

Schell appreciated how Carter had rejected elite Zip codes for Plains, the farm town of roughly 500 where she’d entered and exited this world. Only the Secret Service agents trailing her everywhere betrayed her level of fame.

Georgians spoke of Carter with awe: She ate at bare-bones diners. She pounded nails at Habitat for Humanity construction sites well into her golden years. She was married for 77 years - and happily, by all accounts. She advocated for equality when that was taboo. She argued that mental illness was a disease when society still framed it as a moral failure.

When people flocked to Plains to watch her husband teach Sunday school, she was known to pose for a photo with everyone who asked.

“There was inclusiveness in everything she did,” said another bus passenger, Christine Becker, a 74-year-old retiree.

Three seats back sat a retired teacher who knew the Carters through her husband, a minister. Once, the former first lady invited the couple over and insisted on making sugar-free banana pudding. The former first lady, Amanda Howard remembered. Not some personal chef.

“And Jimmy made coffee with a normal Mr. Coffee maker,” recalled Howard, 59. “Nothing fancy.”

The memory came back to her as she stepped off the shuttle toward the Carter Center: the decency of it.

“We’d love people like her to live forever,” she said, “so there is grief, but there’s mostly gratitude.”

Even Carter’s public viewing hours seemed designed to accommodate as many mourners as possible: 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., a blessing for those working a day shift. One was Ira Katz, a 69-year-old pharmacist who opted to walk the half-mile from the Little Five Points Pharmacy to the Carter Center, figuring traffic would be madness.

“She fought for the little guy,” he said.

On the way to the casket, guests filed through the Carter museum, taking in photos of the couple’s history. There were the Carters on their wedding day in 1946 - he was 21, and she was 18.

“What a marriage,” remarked David Niebes, a 70-year-old retired pilot. “Seventy-seven years.”

There was the first lady in a blue coat and shiny brown knee-high boots. There was the first couple posing in front of a Christmas tree with their daughter, Amy. There was the first couple building houses for the homeless.

“They were my heroes,” said Amy Carter, a 52-year-old psychologist (no relation to the family). “They are servants of the poor.”

There were quotes attributed to Rosalynn Carter: “Do what you can to show you care about others, and you will make our world a better place.”

Marnie Lynch, a 58-year-old addiction counselor, wished the politicians of 2023 would take that to heart. She’d learned about Carter’s work on mental illness as a 12-year-old writing a report for middle school and had been a fan ever since.

“Her voice brought awareness to people,” she said.

“She really was incredible,” replied her friend and colleague, 60-year-old Julie Aziz.

As they walked away from her casket, they reflected on the current state of politics. The meanness, the insults, the type of behavior that Carter hadn’t engaged in.

To them, she represented a gentler time.

“You realize this is the end,” Aziz said. “The end of an era.”