Lillian Carter: 1898-1983
To her son, who grew up to be President, she bequeathed a toothy grin, piercing blue eyes and, as she put it, a "feeling for the underdog." To the rest of the nation, Lillian Carter—"Miss Lillian," as she was universally known—passed on a refreshing dose of down-home sass and straightforward irreverence. "There was really nothing outstanding about Jimmy as a boy," she once said of her successful firstborn, contending that Daughter Gloria, two years younger, was actually the smartest of her brood. And in 1976 she admonished her candidate-son Jimmy to "quit that stuff about never telling a lie." Lillian Carter, who died of cancer last week at 85, was never inhibited by her role as First Mother. That strength and independence made her one of the nation's best-loved matriarchs.
If Rose Kennedy produced a clan in which duty and leadership were expected, Miss Lillian expected only, but urgently, that her children be themselves. It had been her way. The fourth of nine children, Bessie Lillian Gordy was born in the southwest Georgia town of Richland, where her postmaster father taught her racial tolerance early on. When the family moved to Plains, Lillian became a nurse, and shocked some neighbors by treating poor blacks as well as whites. She was, she acknowledged, probably "the most liberal woman in the county, maybe the state." In 1923 she married James
Earl Carter, owner of a local farm-supply store, and set about raising four children.
When her husband died in 1953, not long after being elected to the Georgia legislature, she was asked to succeed him. Too depressed, she said no and later regretted it. But she forged a mid-life revival, working as a fraternity housemother and the manager of a nursing home. Then, at 68, she took literally the claim of a TV ad that "age is no barrier" and joined the Peace Corps. Her two years in India, tending to people afflicted with everything from tuberculosis to leprosy, "meant more to me than any other one thing in my life," she said.
Miss Lillian contributed to Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign mainly by staying home in Plains and taking care of Granddaughter Amy, whom she called "my heart." But she also found time for speeches and TV interviews, charming the public with her ingenuous candor. That outspokenness continued after Carter's election, though her off-the-cuff comments sometimes could be embarrassing to the increasingly beleaguered President. During the Iranian hostage crisis, she blurted that she would like to have the Ayatullah Khomeini assassinated.