Nancy Konigsmark’s job as the director of scheduling for former President Jimmy Carter, at the Carter Center, was far more involved than the items on her desk would lead one to believe. There were two things that might catch the eye of a casual observer: the absence of a computer and the presence of a basic one-line, 12-button touch-tone telephone, circa 1970.
The vintage telephone on her desk was the only one in the Carter Center that was hard-wired and had no voice mail or call waiting, said Beth Davis, a scheduling assistant who worked with Ms. Konigsmark for six years.
“If she was on the phone, you got a busy signal, and if she wasn’t at her desk it would ring until the other person finally hung up,” Ms. Davis said, with a light laugh. “She once said that if she spent the day listening to voice mail, she couldn’t imagine how she’d get anything done.”
Ms. Konigsmark treasured her non-Internet-based phone, especially when the rest of the Center experienced technical problems, said Ann K. Johnson, her only sister who lives in Vinings.
“She’d call me and say, ‘Well, every phone in the Carter Center was down today but mine,’” Mrs. Johnson said. “She'd just keep on working while everyone else waited.”
Coordinating the schedule of former President Carter also allowed Ms. Konigsmark to travel the world. Last year, after returning from a 10-day trip to the Sudan with the Carters, she thought she had a stomach bug. A trip to the hospital a few days later revealed she had late-stage ovarian cancer.
Nancy Konigsmark, of Smyrna, died Friday at the home of her sister and brother-in-law, Dr. James M. Johnson Jr., where she'd lived for the past several months. She was 67.
Ms. Konigsmark’s body has been cremated and a memorial service is planned for 2 p.m. March 25 in the Cecil B. Day Chapel at the Carter Center. Carmichael Funeral Home, Smyrna, was in charge of arrangements.
An Atlanta native, Ms. Konigsmark was a graduate of the University of Georgia. Before meeting the Carters in the '60s, she taught special education classes at Peachtree Presbyterian Church. During former President Carter’s 1966 Georgia gubernatorial campaign, she volunteered to help and subsequently got a job in Washington in 1976, when Mr. Carter was elected president, as the scheduling and advance assistant for former first lady Rosalynn Carter.
“Nancy came to know us as few others ever have,” Mrs. Carter said in a prepared statement. “She knew all our likes and dislikes, being able to make our schedules day-by-day pleasant and gratifying. Nancy was a blessing to us from her earliest days.”
Ms. Konigsmark always saw herself as someone in the background, just doing what needed to be done, Mrs. Johnson said.
But for the Carters, she was much more than that.
“For more than 45 years, Nancy has been like a member of our family,” former President Carter said in a prepared statement. “Nancy had a unique ability to plan and orchestrate complicated schedules. She protected us from unreasonable demands and was still able to make the persons extending those invitations feel that we were brokenhearted to decline. She also knew how to give us the unvarnished truth, quite gently, even when it was unpleasant. It will be impossible to replace her in our lives.”
Ms. Konigsmark is also survived by a niece and nephew, and their children.
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