Rosalynn carter do you remember when you and president carter started having conversations about him running for president . I do. What was that like . What was that conversation . It was very interesting. We had a friend that wrote and told jimmy that he thought he ought to run for president. Well, we couldnt even say the word. Thats like my husband is running for. Well, i didnt tell anybody because we kept it very quiet. Um, and. But then once he decided that he would do it, um, that was when i couldnt. I mean, he could hardly say im going to be president. It was just something that was, you know, wed never, ever dreamed would happen. And, um, but it was exciting. I was excited about it. I had campaigned the whole last year before the governors race for him and it was hard and amy was a baby, and i didnt like to leave her all the time. Um, but i enjoyed it. I mean, i learned so much about our state. We have 159 candidates. I knew the capital of every, uh, county. I knew, i mean, and, and issues. In fact, thats how i got involved in Mental Health issues. Running, campaigning for jimmy. They had our big, um, Mental Health facility hospital and theyd been a big expose and the, and the Mental Health systems act had been passed in 19. This was, yeah, 63 and this was 1966 when jimmy first ran for governor, got beat that time. But we got in late because i live in democratic candidate had a heart attack. But um. They were moving people out of the hospital because like 12,000 people where they had room for 3000. It was awful. It was happening all over the country and theyre moving them out before they had any facilities for no services in the communities. And everybody started talking to me about what would your husband do if hes elected governor of georgia . Um, i just learned so much about what was going on, and i after we lost the election, i worked for years to learn a little bit about Mental Health. And then the first month in office, they appointed the Governors Commission to improve services to the mentally and emotionally handicapped. So and so when he told me about that, i thought, this is give me a chance to go look across the whole country. And it was so much fun to me. I just i love to go in in peoples homes. When we first started campaigning for president , i would i went out a lot. I went to florida. Iowa, in the beginning, those are two primaries. We had two and i had been working in the our farm supply business at home. When we got home from the navy. Jim had me i didnt work the first year, but i, um, i started helping him and he only had seasonal labor. I started working for me and said, why dont you come and keep the office while i go out and visit the farmers and so i would go into our 30. That might be six people in somebodys house. I knew the price of fertilizer. I knew how much they could get for their corn without a corn meal. I mean, i loved it. And i met, so it was hard, but i was so excited. I had been able to learn all about georgia and that was able to learn about the country. And i thought i knew would be a good president. Mrs. Carter, when did you know during that campaign that your husband would be elected president . I never that he never we never i dont think anybody in our in our whole campaign thought we would lose. I mean, i maybe you have to have that set of mind to win, but you because we we campaigned all the time, just like we we got to win. What was the peanut brigade . The peanut brigade with a lot of our friends started up from georgia. But being just people from georgia. But then it just grew and grew and grew. Who would campaign over the country for us and it was really wonderful. They paid their own way. In fact, we had no money and everybody who worked in our campaign had to find a house to stay at, like somebody that was a supporter that that would have them spend the let them spend the night with them. Either they had to pay they had to pay for a hotel. Um, that couldnt happen now, but it was really close. No, not with money. Not with the money that you have to have even win the nomination. Rosalynn carter january 20th, 1977. What do you remember about that day . It was Inauguration Day and we walked down pennsylvania avenue in the cold, cold weather. It was exciting. Whose idea was it to walk . It was jimmys idea. He didnt tell me to the night before. Point man didnt tell anybody else except the secret Service Agents, because we didnt. Well, the secret Service Agents didnt want him to for security, but they didnt want him to talk walk at all. But i guess he just thought it was better. Nobody was anticipating him walking down pennsylvania avenue. I think he thought everything would be different if if they believed him, maybe, uh, if we, maybe we shouldnt do it. If everybody knew it, you know . Anyway, it was, it was. It was really wonderful. So, january 20th, 1977, youre the first lady of the united states. How do you prepare to become first lady . Well, becoming first, the hard part for me was going from the farm supply business to the Governors Mansion, a beautiful Governors Mansion. It was new, but the outgoing governor had only lived in it for two years. Columnist dont know for that federal period, authentic federal period, furniture all the way through. And i went to see the outgoing governors wife after we won and ask who did the cooking . And she said, i do. I said, who serves the table . She said, i do everything i ask, as she did it. And i said, id like to see your office. Where is your. She said, i dont have one of is in my staff is in the which is that i have an office in the um governors and the capital with the governors and they handle my and my correspondence. I said, do you make speeches . And she said, no, i let the governors mother do that. I went home and said, what have we done . And the all the help in the house were trust is from the prison and the first thing i do is hire. There was her a housekeeper. And then we we taught the prisoners to cook and to serve tables and and i developed a fairly competent staff. We had her in the music club of atlanta, had invited me to entertain benton harbor, and he was coming to play to perform in atlanta on january 30th. We we actually moved in the Governors Mansion on january the 12th. So jimmy had an aunt in this area, and i called her because she was really wonderful person. And she came to and helped me. And we did a beautiful dinner for him. We we put tuxedos on and the prisoners, which was new and different for them. And, uh, anyway, we, we had a really wonderful meeting and then, as i said, we called it, um, oh, i got her to organize docents who could take people through the Governors Mansion, because when i went the first time, a state patrolman were in the hallway guarding the tool and i thought that didnt seem very homey. So i got the says it had a list of people that came in who came every day to everybody that come at the mansion was open. That was. Anyway, i had to learn everything i had to develop the staff. We learned by trial and error. I had my assistant that helped me. And we, for instance, when we entertained we the one of the first entertainers we had was a man who had sat. We read his biography and his talent and what he did, and it sounded perfect. We had a lot of racecar drivers. Atlanta speedway and and they were coming to eat dinner with us. So we got him. He stood up. When he stood up to sing, he sang light opera, if you can believe. Oh, ill slid under the table. After that, we learned we had to audition everybody. We just learned by. When i got to the white house, everything was already done at a social secretary. I didnt have to worry about the, you know, about what we were going to serve or any of those things. She would make out plans for me and bring them to me and i would decide what i wanted to do. It was really quite wonderful and it was three years old when we moved to the Governors Mansion. Shed never known anything else and she would. And you couldnt. And the governors right. And the only thing i would change is that you couldnt get from upstairs where we lived, to the kitchen, without going through the tourist and amy learned that three years of age to walk through the tourists like this because everybody has the baby that is the baby. And she got to where she would just walk right straight through without even seeing them. And i remember when we got to the white house and she went to school the first day, it was amy going in like this, which she had been doing all her life, going through the dirt. And everybody felt so sorry for. But that was just part of her life. And and actually after that happened, on the first day, the press got together and decided not to bother amy anymore. And so and that was really wonderful to in the white house, we didnt have to worry about that very much. Where did you first meet . Jimmy carter. Well, in plains, georgia has a population of 634. I think i knew everybody in town and there were no girls my age in town. And of course, i knew who he was. I drank some. I knew him, but he was three years older than i am. And but his little sister, who was three years younger than i would stay in town for if we had a basketball game or some event at the school, she would stay with her grandmother, who lived in town, and we became really close friends. She was my best friend growing up. This is ruth. This is ruth and, um. But he graduated from high school at 16. We only went 11 grades back then and i was 13. Well, there was no way i ever thought i would go with jimmy carter, and i didnt go with him until he came home. The lad before he was the first class, when he came home from the, um, Naval Academy and i went out with him the night before he was going to leave. But ruth and i plotted to get me out there with him because i wanted to. I had fallen in love with his photograph on the wall, in her room at home. And so she would call me and say hes here, and i would go. He had a month leave and i would go out there and hed be gone. And one day we we we had a farmhouse and jimmys parents had a farmhouse not close to but i mean, fairly close to the house and and and everybody in town used it for events, Church Events and School Events and things like that. So when they she called and said that somebody had used the phone as the night before and that they were going out there and clean up jimmy, she and jimmy and want me to come home. So i spent the day with it and that night i was a Church Meeting standing at the door. At the door that was a youth meeting. One night during the week. And ruth, with her boyfriend and jimmy drove up and he got out of the car and asked me to go to the movie with him. So i went to the movie with him and then i went to the railroad station to see him over the next night. And then we started riding in, led us to each other. And at christmas time he asked me to marry and i turned him down. I was young and i had promised my father on his deathbed that i would go to college and i had not finished college well out of i went to annapolis the weekend of the ring dance, but i dont remember what they call the weekend. But yes, again. And i accepted. I was still young and it was july seventh, 1946. Thats all right. You said your father died when you were quite young. 30 . Mm hmm. I was the oldest of four children in my look at two brothers, and then my little sister, who was four years old and, um, my father, uh, developed leukemia. Um, i didnt know he was sick. And id been wanting to go to a church camp in the summer and they told me we didnt have enough money for it. And. And then one day i came home and from school and, and my dad asked me if i would still like to go to the camp as a group, but i didnt know was that he was going up. I was going to the hospital to see what was wrong, and he died. Just maybe that was in maybe may and he died in november. How did that affect your role as the oldest child. Well, everything changed for, um. I was the oldest one. My mother had never written a check. She went she had a she went to college for two years and had a teacher certificate, but she had never taught and back then in plains, you ordered your groceries and i plains Mercantile Company bought your clothes and things and they were all the groceries. They would send the groceries to the house. My daddy paid for it all. And, um, when when when he was on his deathbed, he called us all in and the children and told my mother that she wanted him to sell the farm if she had to, because she wanted to still go to school and i think we. So i dont know. Im well, im sure she sold the farm, but the next year her mother died. She was an only child and. Mama died not even we had no idea she was sick and my grandfather was not living on the farm at a time when to the cows and when he came back in, she was leaning over. She was tying a shoe in, in the chair, and somebody called my mother, 11 months after my daddy died. And weve been depending on them so much. And said, your mother died this morning. I mean, it just and imagine anybody doing that, too. I was getting ready to go to school and i heard a screaming in the hall where the telephone were. Yeah. And it was tough. My mother went to school. She worked in a grocery store, and then she worked in the school lunchroom. And then when i was still in high school, she got a job in the post office and worked there the rest until she had retired and she had to retire at age 70. It was the low and i came, i was campaigning. This was 1975 and christmas because her birthdays Christmas Eve and our birthday she had to retire. And so i was campaigning. I went campaigning after christmas. I came back home and my brother said, call me as soon as i got home and said, go to see mother. She cried all week long. So i went to see and and i said, mother, she had had to get up and be at work every morning at 7 00 and then she had to come back late in the afternoon. But my grandfather that came to live with us when my grandmother died. And so my mother had flexible hours because the postmaster didnt want to get up early and he didnt want to stay late. But anyway and i said, mother, dont you enjoy just being able to sleep in the morning . She says, its not that, its just that nobody thinks i can do good work anymore. So that that made an impression on me. And then so when jimmy was president , i did work with aging. I became interested in them in working with Mental Illnesses too, because there were no doctors to care for people with mental illness. And actually the no director doctors, we pay he passed an age discrimination law and with people in the federal government could work as long as they wanted to and people outside could work until they were 75. So i worked a lot on well, it Rosalynn Carter you of always been a political partner to your husband. Is that is that a fair statement . Ive been a partner. I would call it a part it when we he was in the navy for seven years after we got married, we had three boys and the first two years of the first year had one baby. And he was gone for two years. He was on battleships back then. You had to serve two years before you could go to the air force, a submarine and he was going from monday to thursday every week. And a duty on one night. I had to take care of everything. And and then when we got home and i began working in the farm supply business anymore and books very soon than he did and i think thats when we really developed this really good partnership. I could say, dont buy corn anymore. We make losing money on it. I could devise him and it just developed into a really wonderful partnership. And so when he was when i didnt campaign, when he ran for the senate, i kept the business while the campaign. But then when he i campaigned. When he ran for governor was the first time that campaign. And but then when he got in the governors race that, you know, i learned all the issues and campaign and got it and did the same thing when he was running for president. I think we were it was the first time i know lady bird had come through planes on a train. But i think that the first time people that the women had campaign and well, i know i, i got in the car with a friend when jimmy started to run for president and we just i wanted to know if i could campaign in other states like i did in georgia. So with the florida, we went to florida and stayed ten or 12 days and we would just stop along the way in the towns and pass out brochures and look up the radio stations. And in fact, we started work and we started go into it and tell antennas because they were radio stations and you would go in. This might be just a music, you know, station where they played music and they would have no idea what i would say. My husband driving for president. I would like for you to interview me and Vice President of work. President the united states. You got to be kidding. I said, no, im not kidding. And ive have no idea what to ask me. So before the first day was over, i had the i had a five or six questions that i was the things that i wanted people to know about you, you know, about those things. And i came home and said, i can do it. Everybody is the side. What i learned was everybody is the same. They want good families. The good places, the homes. They want good things for their families. They want a church. Usually they wanted a place to worship. They want to make a living and have a good life. I mean, everybody wants the same thing. But look, regions have different other things, but were just in general, people ought to be happy and have a good home and a good family. In your book, first lady from plains, you write that you are more political than your husband. What do you mean by that . I look, he says what he thinks out of what it is, and sometimes i would get after it because i think you have to be political in a certain way. You have to be honest and you have to say the same things. But still you have to cater to people. Sometimes i think and know what they want and need to be able to influence them to vote for you and its not being dishonest. Its just finding out what they want and letting them know how youre going to help them with those problems that things that they want, the things they want in the government, just being political. And he but jimmy thinks if something needs to be done, it needs to be done. Now. And when he was in office and and world whens president , i dont think he ever did anything that was not controversial. But in life i didnt like the war controversy all the time. Rosalynn carter in the white house, you held press conferences, traveled solo, ac