James “Chip” Carter III, Rosalynn Carter’s son, described his mother as “the glue who held our family together.”
He recounted his mother telling him that when she married Jimmy Carter, she wanted him to provide a life of adventure.
“She said daddy kept his word, that she’d probably had more adventures than anyone else on earth,” Chip Carter said.
He discussed his mother’s travels with the Carter Center to some 120 countries.
“She had met kings and queens, presidents and others of authority... she said the people she felt the most comfortable, the people she enjoyed being with the most were those who lived in abject poverty,” he said.
He said that after Jimmy Carter was put into hospice care and his mother was in the throes of dementia, she reminisced to family members about her past adventures. She described living in Hawaii while Jimmy Carter was in the Navy and learning the hula. He said she got up from the sofa, pushed her walker away and proceeded to hula for several minutes.
“That’s how you do it,” Rosalynn Carter told Chip Carter’s wife, he said.
After speaking, Chip Carter kissed his mother’s casket, then walked off stage and kissed his father.
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