Plains is preparing to celebrate Rosalynn Carter’s birthday without her, for the first time since the former first lady passed away.
Memories of her literally still flutter through her southwest Georgia hometown, where her husband of 77 years, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, is in hospice and continues to live in the ranch house they shared for most of their lives.
This year’s celebration, slated for Aug. 16 through 18, the latter being her actual birthday, will include music, a film screening, a public conversation with her family members, food distribution in the community, a fundraising auction of historical collectibles, a church service, and servings of birthday cake.
And, perhaps one of the most Rosalynn of activities, the third-annual butterfly release in a local garden.
A year ago, Rosalynn Carter was still a physical presence, if reduced by age and dementia. In 2023, family privately celebrated her 96th birthday with cupcakes, peanut butter ice cream and the release of butterflies in her home garden. She died in November at home.
Over the years, she sometimes agreed to let her birthday celebration be a chance to fundraise for causes she cared about. But butterflies were also part of her happiness.
The former first lady pushed for a butterfly garden at her childhood home in town more than a decade ago. Since then, other monarch butterfly gardens celebrating her effort have sprouted in the area and around the nation. For her birthday in 2022, a “Dancing with Monarchs” sculpture was installed at the Rosalynn Smith Carter Childhood Garden, which had been dedicated in her honor the year before.
In 2017, a jazz concert was part of the fundraising celebration for her birthday. What did the former president give her as a birthday present that year? A robotic vacuum cleaner.
Years earlier, on her 80th birthday, Rosalynn Carter told an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter that while she wanted to ease back on her busy schedule at the time and spend more time at home, “there are so many important things to do … Every year we say we’ve got to cut back, but I still don’t want to miss anything.”
She was updating an earlier book she had written on mental health, working on Habitat for Humanity homes, snow skiing and fly fishing. At the time, the former president called her “the wind beneath my wings.”
Later this year, additional festivities are planned in Atlanta and Plains in honor of Jimmy Carter’s 100 birthday, which is Oct. 1.
Organizers in Plains also recently disclosed plans for a Happy Birthday, Mr. President musical concert at the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park’s old Plains High School Auditorium. The concert will feature pianist David Osborne and singer-songwriters Cindy Morgan and Andrew Greer. Greer said he and Morgan will debut a new song written in Jimmy Carter’s honor. More details on the ticketed event are slated to be announced later in August.
More information about the events scheduled in Plains by the local Friends of Jimmy Carter organization to mark Rosalynn Carter’s birthday in August are available at https://www.jimmycarterfriends.org/
Additional details about the Aug. 17 auction can be seen at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2024-carter-historical-auction-tickets-915276475577?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
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