Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, are “still holding hands” as they enter their “final chapter” together at home in Plains, Georgia, the former US president’s grandson said.
“It’s clear we’re in the final chapter,” Josh Carter said of his grandparents, the first couple between 1977 and 1981, in an interview published by People magazine on Saturday.
Jimmy Carter, 98, entered hospice care in February, seeking “to spend his remaining time at home with his family”. In May, the Carter family announced that Rosalynn Carter, 96, has dementia.
“My grandparents have always been the entertainers,” Josh Carter told People. “But now we’re kind of the ones having to entertain. It’s different, it’s just a different era.”
His grandfather, he said, was “still fully Jimmy Carter. “He’s just tired. I mean he’s almost 99 years old but he … has felt the love.”
His grandmother, Josh said, “still knows who we are, for the most part – that we are family. My grandmother is still able to form new memories.”
The Carters married 77 years ago, in 1946. Jimmy Carter served in the US Navy before becoming the Democratic governor of Georgia in 1971. He rose to the White House in the bicentennial election of 1976, beating the Republican Gerald Ford.
Through a turbulent four years in power, Rosalynn Carter was an influential first lady, known to some as the “Steel Magnolia”. In 1980, one White House insider told the Observer that Rosalynn Carter was “a great second line of defence”, able to get her husband “to change his mind”.
Rosalynn Carter said: “I am in the eye of history. I know I have influence, and I enjoy it.”
Speaking to People, Josh Carter said it’s “gotta be hard” for the former president to see his wife struggle with dementia, “but on the other hand, they’ve experienced everything that you can together. I think the beautiful thing is that they are still together.
“They are still holding hands … it’s just amazing.”
The Republican who beat Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan, died in 2004, aged 93. Reagan’s Republican successor, George HW Bush, died in 2018, aged 94. Carter is the longest-lived president. His post-presidency is widely held to be the most successful.
Out of power, Carter conducted diplomatic missions and championed charitable work. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel peace prize, “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.
Now, Josh Carter told People, “Odds are I’m gonna lose my grandfather before my grandmother. He’s in hospice care and she’s not, and it’s just math.”
In March, Joe Biden said Jimmy Carter had asked him to deliver his eulogy.
