First Lady from Plains

Rosalynn Carter

• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Year: 1994
• Print ISBN: 9781557283559
• eBook ISBN: 9781610751551
• Subtopic: Political Biographies

First Lady from Plains, first published in 1984, is Rosalynn's Carter's autobiography, covering her life from her childhood in Plains, Georgia, through her time as First Lady. It is "a readable, lively and revealing account of the Carters and their remarkable journey from rural Georgia to the White House in a span of ten years" (The New York Times).

CHAPTER 1

The Early Years

Jimmy and I grew up three years and three miles apart, he on a farm in the “country,” and I, along with my two younger brothers, Jerry and Murray, and my much younger sister, Allethea, in a simple white frame house in the middle of Plains. The red clay soil is very fertile in southern Georgia, and my mother grew zinnias, petunias, hollyhocks, crepe myrtle, and what seemed like hundreds of other flowers in carefully tended beds on the street side of our house; the backyard held our vegetable garden and lots of trees—fig, pear, pecan, and wild cherry, and pomegranate bushes and a scuppernong arbor. I remember very well that we had rosebushes too, because once I fell out of the sitting room window and landed in one of them. I still have the scar on my chin to remind me.

Our backyard seemed enormous. At its edge was a wood-pile for the cookstove and coal for burning in the fireplaces. There was a smokehouse, a chicken house filled with chickens, and at one time a rabbit pen, though we finally had to get rid of the rabbits because they kept multiplying and we ran out of room for them. We also had a barn for the milk cow and a few pigs, and another barn for the mules my father used on our nearby farm. Behind the barns was someone else’s field. Every spring the rains formed a pond in it, and we could hear the loud chirping of the frogs from our porch at night.

Dust was a prominent part of our life. Billows of red dust engulfed us every time a car passed or the wind blew. The only paved road in town was the main highway that went to Americus. We lived on a heavily traveled dirt road, and the dust would settle on the front porch and seep into the house. There was no way to keep it out. The doors and windows had to be open in the spring, summer, and fall because of the heat and humidity.

Plains was very small, only one square mile with a population of about six hundred. Everyone in town knew everyone else, which was very nice when there was trouble or someone was sick, or when there was a death in the family. There was no such thing as privacy, though; everyone knew everyone else’s business. But it was a good place and a good spirit to grow up in. We grieved with one another over the sad things and rejoiced together over the happy things. Collectively, we were secure and isolated from the outside world.

We had no movie theater, no library, no recreation center, in Plains. Occasionally someone would open a restaurant, but it would never last very long. The social life of the community revolved around the churches. My grandmother Murray was Lutheran, my grandfather Baptist, and my parents Methodist. I went to all three churches—almost every time the doors opened, it seemed—to Sunday school and regular Sunday church service, to prayer meeting, Methodist League, Baptist Girls Auxiliary, and Bible school. We regularly went to family nights at the church and sometimes ate dinner outdoors on the church grounds, and looked forward eagerly to one of the big events of the year, the revival meeting. For a whole week during the summer there would be preaching morning and night, and we never missed a service. We sang and prayed, and the preachers always came to our house for a meal.

God was a real presence in my life, especially in those revival times. We were taught to love Him and felt very much the necessity and desire to live the kind of life He would have us live, to love one another and be kind to and help those who needed help, and to be good. But we were also taught to fear God, and though I loved Him, I was afraid of displeasing Him all my young life. I didn’t think about Him as a forgiving God but as a punishing God, and I was afraid even to have a bad thought. I thought that if we were good He would love us, but if we weren’t, He wouldn’t.

The other focal point of our community was our school. We were very proud of our school, which had less than a hundred and fifty students in eleven grades, and the parents participated in all school activities. Like other southern towns then, we had a school for blacks and a separate school for whites; an invisible barrier separated the white community from the black community, and few people crossed it. Miss Lillian, Jimmy’s mother, was one of the exceptions. She was a registered nurse, and no matter who was sick, black or white, she was there. Always. People didn’t have money for nurses or even doctors much of the time, and this was before we had penicillin or other antibiotics. People got sick at home and died at home. And Miss Lillian was always there. She was a wonderful person, and the whole community had great respect for her. My parents even named my sister, Lillian Allethea, after her.

My father, Wilburn Edgar Smith, was a tall, handsome man with dark, curly hair. He drove the school bus, worked in one of the mercantile stores in town on weekends, owned an auto repair shop, and ran his farm on the outskirts of town. When I was a child we felt very fortunate because we always had a car. It was never a new one, but my father had a reputation of being able to fix any car so it would run like new. My mother, Frances Allethea Murray, whom everyone called “Allie,” was beautiful, with wavy brown hair and dark brown eyes to match. She met my father, who was nine years older, when she was in high school and he was driving the school bus. They didn’t marry, though, until she had finished college, graduating with a teacher’s diploma. The next year, on August 18, 1927, I was born and named Eleanor Rosalynn Smith after my mother’s mother, whose name was Rosa.

Times were hard then, not only for us but for everybody. My father lost his nest egg, one thousand dollars, when the Plains bank failed in 1926. And soon after my first brother was born in 1929, the stock market crashed in New York. As children, however, we were unaware of any hardship. We grew our own food and had good clothes. In school I often drew pictures of a dress I wanted, or I’d go to Americus, ten miles away, and copy dresses from the store windows (I’d never dare go inside) and my mother would make them for me. I thought I had the prettiest dresses in town, and my clothes were the envy of all my friends. When Ruth Carter, Jimmy’s sister, who was two years younger than I, became my best friend, I gave her the ones I had outgrown. Our family didn’t have much money, but neither did anyone else, so as far as we knew, we were well off.

There were literally no other girls in town my age. Ruth lived in the country, and I didn’t really know her until she started to school. So I played with my two brothers, Murray and Jerry, and the other boys who lived on our street. We played kick the can and cops and robbers and set up a play store in our barn, where somebody would clerk and others would buy things. We “played out” at night under the streetlights and climbed on the bales of cotton that lined the streets in the summer waiting to be shipped out on the railroad. When it got really hot, we hiked to Magnolia Springs, two miles out of town, and swam there in a cool, springwater pool. One of our favorite places was the railroad depot, which was close to my father’s garage. There were passengers arriving and others departing for unknown places away from Plains, and there were always freight trains switching boxcars and being loaded with watermelons, peanuts, cotton, or whatever produce the farmers had brought to town. Often the farmers would give us a watermelon from the huge piles of them on the ground. I never thought it was odd to be playing with boys. There just weren’t any girls, and I never had any trouble with the boys because I was always the oldest.

I also played by myself much of the time. I loved dolls, and my mother made clothes for them and taught me how to sew. I liked paper dolls too, and often I’d cut them out of old Sears Roebuck catalogues. I made quilt squares out of the scraps from Mother’s sewing, and she would stitch them together and make quilts. But more than anything, I liked to read. I read Heidi and Hans Brinker and Robinson Crusoe and dreamed about faraway places.

We all had chores to do around the house. I helped make the beds, churn, sweep the porch, and wash and dry the dishes. My brothers milked, took care of the cow and pigs, and brought in the wood and coal for the stove and fireplaces. Our father was very strict about our responsibilities, and we did our best to please him. One day, when it was Murray’s turn to take the cow to graze by the side of Daddy’s garage, a car passed, frightening the cow. It ran the whole long block home, dragging Murray the last part of the way, badly bruising and scratching him. When Mother asked him why he didn’t just turn the rope loose, he said, “I couldn’t. Daddy told me not to!”

Though my father was strict, I remember many warm and wonderful times together. He did tricks for us, told us stories, and turned cartwheels and stood on his hands for us in the front yard. One night when Mother went to her missionary circle, he even baked a cake to entertain us. He didn’t drink and had no patience with those who did. He did like to hunt and fish and would take time off occasionally to go. And he smoked a pipe. I can see him puffing away, listening through the earphones to our battery radio, laughing over “Amos ’n’ Andy” or tapping his foot to the Grand Ole Opry.

When Daddy came home from work, he always rushed into the kitchen, picked up my mother, whirled her around the room, and gave her a kiss. My friends’ parents didn’t act this way in front of their children, so I thought my house was very special. We followed a daily routine that rarely varied. My father got up early, very early, and went into the kitchen to build a fire in the wood stove. After my mother had made the coffee, he would drink a cup of it, black, and so hot that we always marveled at him. He kept a little mirror and a razor strap in the kitchen so he could shave where it was warm. The stove was in front of the window, and often I would wedge myself onto the windowsill and watch while he shaved, more than once burning my knees on the side of the stove. After he shaved, my father would leave to drive the school bus, coming home later for a big breakfast of grits, side meat or sausage, eggs, and hot biscuits before going to work in his garage or on the farm.

We were brought up to mind our parents, and we did, most of the time. My worst behavior was always “running away” from home. I crossed the street to play with my friends, but crossing the street was dangerous for one so small, and thus forbidden to me. My father always spanked me for this, and afterward he would tell me not to cry. And I wouldn’t. But later I would go to the outdoor privy and cry and cry there all alone. I thought my mother always took up for him. She’d say that we needed the punishment, but she didn’t like to watch us being punished. She always left the room, sometimes with tears in her eyes. But after all, we had done something wrong to deserve it. We were brought up to believe that you did what your mother or father told you to do or you took the consequences. Often we took the consequences.

I don’t know why my father wouldn’t let me cry. I thought it was very unfair that I couldn’t, that I had to keep it all inside. Maybe he was teaching me to be strong. But often I would think that he was mean and imagine that he didn’t love me. Just having these thoughts troubled me and gave me a guilty conscience for years.

When I started school I studied hard and was very conscientious about my work. It soon paid off. I made all A’s on my first report card and ran all the way home to show it to my parents. They were just as proud. Mother said, “I knew you could do it,” and Daddy gave me a dollar! I continued to make good grades, and when I was in the third grade, I helped teach arithmetic to those second-graders who were slow learners. I took great pride in pleasing my parents, and I loved school as a young child. My teachers, all women, were my idols.

Even at that age, the burden I put on myself of always having to do well began to be heavy. I knew I wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t want my daddy to know. He thought I was really smart and that I could do everything just right, which made it very painful whenever I failed. Our house was a couple of blocks from the school, and every day I walked by my father’s garage, which was halfway between. At school we had a midmorning recess and later a brief lunch period, when I walked home to eat. One day I was walking past the garage when my father called out to me, “Sister, where are you going?” I told him I was going home for lunch and he began to laugh and laugh. “It’s not lunchtime yet,” he said. “It’s recess.” I was so embarrassed to have made such a stupid mistake that I cried and begged him to let me just go on home and stay there until after lunch. But he made me go back to school, where everybody laughed at me all over again. I have never felt so humiliated; I felt I had lost everyone’s respect.

I set very high standards, and although I sometimes found it difficult to live up to them, I could not let up on myself. When I was in the seventh grade, a merchant in town who had failed the seventh grade offered a five-dollar award to the student who had the highest yearly average. I had to win it. Everyone expected me to—my mother, my father, my teachers, and my classmates. I don’t remember working so hard before or since, unless it was in a presidential campaign, but I finally won the prize. That kind of pressure is intense when you’re twelve years old. But I also began to see that the satisfaction of accomplishment sometimes compensates for the hard work.

It was in the seventh grade that I began to realize that the boundaries of the world extended beyond our sheltered and isolated community of Plains, Georgia. We had a young teacher who was beautiful and who I thought knew more than anyone I had ever met. She was extremely interested in current events and prodded us to read the newspapers and listen to the radio, to stretch our minds about our country and the world. One day Miss MacArthur brought a map of the world to school and told us that there was a war in Europe and that it was important we know about it. Each day she assigned a different student the task of bringing the class up to date on the war news. For the first time in my life, I began searching newspapers to discover a world of interesting people and faraway places, but also a menacing and ominous world. I worried about all the terrible things that were happening as war approached, and lay in bed at night, hoping it would just go away somehow. The year was 1939, however, and that was not to happen.

That summer was the first time I went away from home. For months I had been badgering my parents to let me go to summer camp with a group of girls from our church, but they had expressed little enthusiasm. So I was startled when one morning in June my mother called me in and said, “How would you like to go to Camp Dooley?” Would I! I immediately began to get ready, making myself some shorts and a couple of cotton skirts. Off I went, suffering only a twinge of homesickness but a very nice feeling of independence.

When I returned home, I understood their sudden change of mind. My father was sick—very, very sick. While I had been at camp and my brothers and little sister were visiting my mother’s parents, Daddy had been in the hospital for tests. The adults had known about his illness for some time, and they assured us that he would soon be all right.

But he wasn’t. Several weeks passed, and although Daddy didn’t stay in bed all the time, we knew something was very wrong. He’d always been a strong man who worked on automobiles, who could do anything, but now he wasn’t even going to work every day. He kept reassuring me that he was doing exactly what the doctors had told him and that he was going to get well, but I began to worry. And I began to pray.

In August I knew I was right. One day Daddy started having trouble breathing and Mother told me to call the doctor quickly. I was so frightened that instead of telephoning, I ran all the way to the doctor’s house and got so out of breath, I couldn’t tell him why I had come. But he understood. He bundled me into his car and we went to my house. From then on nothing did any good, and my father became steadily worse. He stayed in bed all the time and would often call the family to gather around, asking each one of us what we had done during the day. He seemed genuinely proud of our reports, and we did everything to make sure he would be. He often talked about the future and his expectations for us when we grew up. And he always wanted us to read the Bible together.

I don’t think I have ever felt so sad. I thought he was suffering because of the mean thoughts I’d had about him in the past, that somehow I was part of the cause of his illness. I felt so guilty that I tried to do everything I possibly could to erase those bad thoughts and to let him know how much I loved him. I waited on him hand and foot, brushed his hair for him, and read to him for hours—detective stories were his favorites. I thought I would never forgive myself if anything happened to him, and I didn’t dare tell anyone how I felt. Especially my mother. I didn’t want to add to her hurt.

His face, once ruddy under his black hair, grew whiter and whiter, and when we played in his room or read to him, I noticed he often had tears in his eyes. Finally, one day in October, Mother called all of us in around his bed and he began to talk to us. “I want you all to listen very carefully to what I have to say and be very brave,” he said. “The time has come to tell you that I can’t get well and you’re going to have to look after Mother for me. You are good children and I’m depending on you to be strong.” I wanted to cry out “It can’t be true. It can’t be true.” But of course it was, and my heart was broken. I began to cry, sobbing uncontrollably, and tears rolled down my father’s cheeks as well. He soon contained his emotions and told us to stop crying, but one of my brothers kept sobbing and sobbing. My father kept talking, telling us many things that day he had never told us before. He explained that he had always wanted to go to college but could not, and that no matter what happened, we were to go to college, to have the opportunities he hadn’t had. He told my mother to sell even the farm if she needed the money for our educations. His greatest sorrow, he said, was that he was not going to be here to make sure we all got good educations and had good lives. I was devastated. I ran from the house to be alone with my grief in my usual crying place. My childhood really ended at that moment.

After that, someone was always at our house to help. Miss Lillian, who had been there from the beginning, now came every day to give my father shots and help my mother care for him. Men from the community, Daddy’s friends, took turns staying with him, keeping him company and helping to turn him in his bed. Other friends brought food, ran errands, and helped Mother with the housework and the smaller children. Everyone in our community was concerned, and though our world was falling apart, we knew we were cared for. There were times I resented all the attention and the people, but I couldn’t let anyone see my feelings. I wanted to be by myself or just with my mother or father.

The night it was clear that Daddy was going to die, Jimmy’s mother came to take me to her house to spend the night with Ruth. I don’t remember seeing Jimmy that night—I wasn’t interested in him then—but I remember that I was relieved to get away from home. We had waited and waited for the end, and too many people had been crowding around the house. When I went to bed that night, I never wanted to wake up. I wanted to stay asleep and believe it was all a bad dream. But in the middle of the night Miss Lillian woke me and took me home. My father was dead of leukemia at the age of forty-four. My mother was thirty-four. The youngest of the four children, my sister, was only four. I was thirteen.

The next few years were very difficult for all of us, and we were not spared from further loss. After Daddy died, our maternal grandparents, Mama and Papa Murray, helped us a lot. My grandfather rented the farm and collected Daddy’s bills. Our grandmother stayed with us sometimes to help my mother, and we in turn stayed with her. One morning less than a year after Daddy died the phone rang, and suddenly I heard Mother crying. Mama Murray, the caller told her, had died. That morning Papa had gotten up and gone out to milk the cows. When he left, Mama had been getting dressed, but when he came back from the barn, he found her leaning over in her chair, as though she had been tying her shoes when it happened. Once again, our house was filled with neighbors helping in our new loss. And another funeral. It was many years before I could bring myself to attend yet another funeral.

After Mama Murray died there were many changes. At seventy, Papa left the farm, which had been the only home he had ever known, to move in with us. Now he leaned on Mother for strength, as did we. And my mother, an only child who had always been special and secure and dependent, now had the responsibility, not only of managing the meager finances of our family, but also of raising four children and caring for her father. She did what had to be done—she took charge. Since we only had the income from the farm and my father’s insurance, $18.25 a month, to live on, Mother went to work. She “took in” sewing for others, and I helped her. One of her first jobs was making an entire trousseau for a local bride: suits, dresses, slacks, even gowns. She sold the milk and butter from our one cow. She worked for a while in the school lunchroo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Preface 1994
• Prologue
• 1. The Early Years
• 2. The Return to Plains
• 3. The Governor’s Mansion
• 4. The ’76 Campaign
• 5. The White House
• 6. Conservation, Controversy Protection, and the Press
• 7. Envoy to Latin America
• 8. People, Parties, and Protocol
• 9. Summit at Camp David
• 10. The Office of the First Lady
• 11. Iran and the Beginning of the End
• 12. The Last Six Months
• Epilogue
• Index