Next, in an interview with cspan, former first lady rose lynn carter talked about the lessons she learned as first ladies, as well as her time in the white house and working alongside her husband, former president jimmy 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. That my husband is running for i didnt tell anybody because we kept it very quiet. And but then once he decided that he would do it, that was when i couldnt he could hardly say im going to be president. It was just something that was we never ever dreamed would happen. And but it was exciting. I was excited about it. I had campaigned whole last year before the governs race. And it was hard. And amy was a baby. And i didnt like to leave her all the time. I enjoyed it. I learned so much about our state. We have 159 counties. I knew the capital of every county. Issues, thats how i got involved in Mental Health issues, running the campaign for jimmy. Our big Mental Health facility hospital, there had been a big expose, and the Mental Health systems act had been passed, this was in 63, and this was 1966 when jimmy first ran for governor and got beat that time. We got in late because our leading democratic candidate had a heart attack. They were moving people out of the hospital because there were like 12,000 people where they had room for 3,000. It was awful. It was happening all over the country. They were moving them out before they had any facilities for them and no services in the communities. Everybody started talking to me about what will your husband do if hes elected governor of georgia. I just learned so much about what was going on. After we lost that election, i worked four years to learn a little bit about Mental Health and then the first month in office he appointed the Governors Commission to improve services for the mental and emotionally handicap. Within he told me about that i thought this is giving me a chance to go across the whole country. It was so much fun to me. I loved to go into peoples homes when we first started campaigning for president. I went to iowa a lot, florida and iowa, in the beginning. Those are two primaries. I had been working in the our farm supply business at home. When we got home from the navy, jimmy had me. I didnt work the first year. But i started helping him and he only had seasonal labor. I started working for him and he said why dont you come and keep the office while i go out and visit the farmers. So, i would go into iowa to a tea. There might be six people in somebodys house. I knew the price of fertilizer and how much they could get for their corn. We had had a corn mill. I loved it. And i met so many, it was hard, but i was so excited. I had been able to learn all about georgia and i was able to learn about the country. I thought i knew he would be a good president. Mrs. Carter, when did you know during that campaign that your husband would be elected president . I never doubted it. We never doubted it. I dont think anybody in our whole campaign thought we would lose. I mean, maybe you have to have that set of mind to win. Because we campaigned all the time, just like we were going to win. What was the peanut brigade . The peanut brigade was a lot of our friends. It started out from georgia, but just being people from georgia, but it grew and grew and grew, who would campaign all over the country for us. And it was really wonderful. They paid their own way. In fact, we had no money. Everybody who worked in our campaign had to find a house to stay at, somebody that was a supporter that would have them let them spend the night with them. Either they had to pay for a hotel, but that couldnt happen now. But it was really close, not with money. Not with the money that you have to have, even to win the nomination. Rosalynn carter, january 20th, 1977, what do you remember about that day . It was inauguration day. 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 until the night before. Why not . He didnt tell anybody else except the secret service agents. Because we didnt well, the secret service didnt want to worry security. In fact, they didnt want to walk at all. Walking down pennsylvania avenue, i think he thought that everything would be different if maybe maybe we shouldnt do it, if everybody knew it. Anyway, 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 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 there for two years. Federal period, authentic federal period furniture all the way through. I went to see the outgoing governors wife after we won and she said who does the dishes . She said, i do. Everything i asked her, she did it. I said, id like to see your office. She said i dont have one, she said i had an officer in the governors in the governors. Correspondence. I said, do you make speeches, i let the governors mother do that. I went home and i said what have we done. All the help in the house were from the prison. First thing i did was hire a housekeeper. Then we taught the prisoners to cook and to serve tables. And i developed a fairly competent staff. We had to hurry because the music club of atlanta had invited me to entertain van cliburn. He was coming to play in atlanta. On january 30th we actually moved in the Governors Mansion on january 12th. Jimmy had an aunt in this area. And i called her, because shes a really wonderful person. And she came and helped me and we did a beautiful dinner for them. We put tuxedos on the prisoners, which was new and different for them. Anyway, we had a wonderful meeting. And then aunt cece we called her, i got her to organize those who could take people through the Governors Mansion. Because when i went the first time the state patrolmen were in the hallway guiding the tours and i thought that didnt seem very homey so i got the aunt with a list of people that came and helped, came every day. Every day that the mansion was open. Anyway, i had to learn everything. I had to develop the staff. We learned by trial and error. I had my sister that helped me and we, for instance, when we entertained we one of the first entertainers we had was a man who had we read his biography and his talent and what he did and it sounded perfect. We had a lot of race car drivers. Atlanta has a speedway and they were coming to eat dinner with us. We got him. He stood up, when he stood up to sing, he sang light opera. If you can believe, i slid under the table. After that we learned we had to audition everybody. When i got to the white house, everything was already done. Had a social secretary. I didnt have to worry about, you know, about what we were going to serve or any of those things. She would make our plans for me and bring them to me and i would decide what i wanted to do. It was quite wonderful. And amy was 3 years old when we moved to the Governors Mansion. She had never known anything else. You couldnt the Governors Mansion the only thing i would change is that you couldnt get from our upstairs where we lived to the kitchen without going through the tourists. Amy learned at 3 years of age to walk through the tourists like this because everybody would be theres the baby, theres the baby. She got where she would walk right straight through without seeing them. I remember when we got to the white house and she went to school the first day, here was amy going in like this, which she had been doing all her life, going through. Everybody felt so sorry for her. But that was just part of her life. Actually, after that happened on the first day, the press got together and decided not to bother amy anymore. And that was really wonderful too in the white house. We didnt have to worry about that very much. Where did you first meet jimmy carter . Well, 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. Can i drink some water . I knew him, but he was three years older than i am. But his little sister who was three years younger than i am, 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. We became really close friends. She was my best friend growing up. This is ruth . This is ruth. But he graduated from high school at 16. We only went 11 grades back then. I was 13. There was no way i ever thought i would go with jimmy carter. I didnt go with him until he came home the last before he was a first classman he came home from the Naval Academy and i went out with him the night before he was going to leave. 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. She would call me and say hes here and he had a months leave and i would go out there and he would be gone. One day, we had a pond house, and jimmys parents had a pond house, not close i mean, fairly close to the house. And everybody in town used it for events, Church Events and School Events and things like that and called and said that somebody had used the pond house the night before and they were going out there and cleaning up. She and jimmy. And wanted me to come spend the day with them. That night i was at the Church Meeting standing at the door, it was a youth meeting one night during the week, and ruth was 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 went to the railroad station to see him off the next tight. And then we started writing letters to each other and at christmastime, he asked me to marry him and i turned him down. I was young. I had my promised my father on his death bed that i would go to college. And i had not finished college well, i well, i went to annapolis, the weekend of the ring dance. I dont remember what they call that weekend. He asked again and i accepted. I was still young. It was july 7th, 1946 . Thats right. You said your father died when you were quite young . 13. I was the oldest of four children. Had two brothers and then my little sister who was 4 years old. And my father developed leukemia. I didnt know he was sick. I had been wanting to go to a church camp in the summer and they told me we didnt have enough money for it. And then one day i came home and from school and my dad asked me if i would like still like to go to the camp. I said great. But what i didnt know was he 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 us. 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. Back then in plains, you ordered your groceries at the plains Mercantile Company and ordered your clothes and they would send the groceries to the house. My daddy paid for it all. When he was on his death bed he called us all in and told my mother that she wanted him to sell the farm if she had to because he wanted us to all go to school. I think we i dont know. 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 lived on a farm outside of town. Went out to milk the cows and when he came back in she was leaning over, she was tying her shoe, dead in the chair. Someone called my mother 11 months after my daddy died. We had been depending on them so much. They said your mother died this morning. I mean, i cant imagine anybody doing that to her. I was getting ready to go to school and i heard her screaming in the hall where the telephone was. And it was tough. Her mother worked in the Grocery Store and then she worked in thele School Lunch Room 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 to retire. She had to retire at age 70. It was the law. And i was campaigning, this is 1975, christmas, because her birthday is Christmas Eve and on her birthday she had to retire. So i was campaigning. I went campaigning after christmas. I came back home. My brother called me as soon as i got home and said go to see mother, she cried all week long. I went to see her i said mother, she had to get up and work every morning at 7 00 and then she had to come back late in the afternoon, but my grandfather 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. Anyway, i said, mother, dont you enjoy just being able to sleep in . She said its not that. Its just that nobody thinks i can do good work anymore. So that made an impression on me. And then, show, when jimmy was president , i did work with teaching and i became interested in working with Mental Illness, too, because there were no doctors to care for people with Mental Illness and no geriatric doctors. 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 it. Rosalynn carter, you have always been a political partner to your husband. Is that a fair statement . Ive been a partner. I would call it a partner. When he was in the navy for seven years after we got married, we had three boys. And the first three years after the first year, i 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 submarine. He was gone from monday to thursday every week and duty one night i had to take care of everything. Then when he got home and i began working in the farm supply business, i knew more in 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 had been losing money on it. I could advise him and it just developed into a really wonderful partnership. So when he was when i didnt campaign when he ran for the senate. I kept the business while he campaigned. But then when he i campaigned when he ran for governor, was the first time i had campaigned. But then when he got in the governors race, i learned all the issues and campaigned and enjoyed it and did the same thing when he was running for president. I think it was the first time i know lady bird had come through plains on a train, but i think that it was the first time people that women had campaigned. I know 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. I went to florida. We went to florida and stayed 10 or 12 days. We would stop along the way in the towns and pass out brochures and look up the radio stations. We started working, we started going toward antennas because they were radio stations. You would go in, this might be just a music station where they played muz music and they had no idea, i would say, my husband is running for president , id like you to interview me. President for what . President of the united states. You got to be kidding me. No, im nod kt kidding. The first day i had five or six questions of things that i wanted people to know about jimmy, about those things. And i came home and said i can do it. What i learned is everybodys the same. They want good families. Good places, homes. They want good things for their families. They want a church. Usually they wanted a place to worship. Everybody wants the same thing. Just in general, people are going to be happy. In your book first lady from plains, you write that you are more political than your husband. What did you mean by that . Because i think you have to be political in a certain way. You have to be honest and say the same things but still, you have to cater to people sometimes, i think. And know what you 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 with the problems. Things that they want in the government. Just being political. But jimmy thinks if something needs to be done, it needs to be done now, when he was in office. Well, when he was president , i dont think he ever did anything that was not controversial. That bothered me sometimes. I didnt like that controversy all the time. Rosalynn carter in the white house, you held press conferences, traveled solo. Acted as the president s emissary. How did you talk about issues that you wanted to talk about or became an expert in . Well, i worked in Mental Health. And a lot of that came from seeing what happened to my mother because that was in the campaign. But also isnt in traveling, in campaigning, they took me to where well, there were a lot of democrats. And so i went to a lot of Nursing Homes and facilities for older people and saw great needs in that area, so that influenced my work. I had worked on immunization in georgia, had a good immunization program. And dale bumpers who was later a senator well, he was senator when jimmy was elected. But he was governor at the same time jimmy was. And he worked on the centers for disease control, a really good immunization program. She talked me into doing it at home. Two weeks after we got to the white house, she called me. And, of course, i was ready to work on immunization in the white house. That was one of our great victories. Immunization was required by school age in 15 states. There was a bit of argument about whether 15 or 17, and the first year we got it in, working with betty, and the secretary of hhs, we got it in all 50 states. That was exciting. And we had this big meeting in washington i go from one subject to another, but we had this big meeting in washington to celebrate all the people from all over the country. The next day there was not one word in