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During her four years in Washington, she worked to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, raise awareness of the need for childhood immunizations, and, above all, aid the mentally ill. She served

as the honorary chair of the President’s Commission on Mental Health and fought for the passage of the 1980 Mental Health Systems Act, to give grants to community centers. When President

Ronald Reagan, a Republican, defeated Carter, a Democrat, for a second term, she made no secret of her disappointment, especially as “funding of our legislation was killed by the philosophy

of a new president. It was a bitter loss.” Mrs. Carter said in an Op-Ed for CNN.com in 2019 that she first became an advocate for the mentally ill in 1966 when she was helping her husband

campaign for governor of Georgia.  “I stood outside the entrance of the factory early in the morning, waiting to give people brochures as they left the night shift. An older woman came out,

looking weary from work. When I asked if she would be able to get some sleep, she told me she hoped so, but that she had a daughter who had a mental illness and needed care while the woman’s

husband was at his job. That conversation would start me on a lifelong crusade for better treatment and policies for people living with mental illnesses.”  When Mrs. Carter and her husband

opened the Carter Center in Atlanta in 1982, she established a mental health program to end the stigma of psychiatric disorders since, “It still keeps so many people from getting help.” In

1999, they were awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom for their work. Born Eleanor Rosalynn Smith on Aug. 18, 1927, the daughter of an auto mechanic and a dressmaker, she experienced what

she called the end of her childhood when her father died of leukemia when she was 13. Though she was salutatorian of Plains High School and went on to Georgia Southwestern College, she was

forced to drop out to assist her mother in her business and in raising the younger siblings.  Jimmy Carter with his wife Rosalynn and their family at the Democratic Convention in 1976. Rolls

Press/Popperfoto via Getty Images One evening in the early 1940s, she attended an event at the Plains United Methodist Church, where she became reacquainted with young Jimmy Carter, home

from the U.S. Naval Academy. He remembered when she was born — the two families had lived next door to one another briefly, and his mother, Lillian, a registered nurse, had helped deliver

her. All those years later, he asked her to a movie, and the following day, told his mother he had met the woman he was going to marry.   The couple wed in 1946 and had four children — three

boys, John William (“Jack”), James Earl III (“Chip”), Donnel Jeffrey (“Jeff”); and a daughter, Amy Lynn — but their life together could be difficult. Mrs. Carter did not always get along

with her mother-in-law, who found her unsuitable for her son. And in the early years of their marriage, they struggled in attempting to grow the family peanut farm and supply business,

living for a year in subsidized housing before becoming successful. Mrs. Carter learned accounting to manage their bookkeeping.