Jimmy and Rosalynn
In 1927 in Plains, Georgia, a three-year-old boy named Jimmy Carter lived next door to an auto mechanic, Francis Smith, and his pregnant wife, Allie. That August, Allie went into labor, and Jimmy's mother, a nurse, helped deliver her daughter. The next day, little Jimmy went next door and peered into the crib. The baby inside was named Rosalynn.
As a teenager, "Rosie" had a fierce crush on Jimmy, but he was three years older, and apparently took little notice of the shy kid next door. During WWII, he left town to join the Naval Academy. One day in the summer of 1945, Jimmy returned to Plains on vacation. While riding in the rumble seat of a friend's Ford, he looked toward the United Methodist church and saw Rosie, now seventeen and all grown up, standing out front. He was gobsmacked. Jimmy hopped out of the rumble seat and asked her to the movies. She jumped right in. He came home that night and told his mother that the baby she'd delivered seventeen years earlier was the girl he was going to marry.
This week, Jimmy and Rosalynn will celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary. Theirs is the longest marriage in presidential history. They have known each other for almost one hundred years.
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So beautiful, this couple. He was my first presidential vote. I cried that night in 1980. I wrote a letter and sent it to the WH. He answered it a few weeks later, with his signature. He had to have really signed it because the ink had slipped just a little. I will never forget this great man and the love of his life.
