ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Jimmy Carter often sent his mother to meet with foreign dignitaries and attend state funerals, but it wasn’t until he started researching a new book about her life that he learned just what the woman known as “Miss Lillian” did on those visits.
“Mama had developed a reputation for expressing unorthodox opinions and not being constrained by any outside advice,” Mr. Carter writes in “A Remarkable Mother,” which chronicles his mother’s life from her birth in 1898 to her death from cancer in 1983. “The officials in the State Department were always quite nervous about what she would do or say that might violate protocol and damage relations between our government and that of the country she was visiting.”
The book, released May 2, is constructed from diaries, letters and interviews with family and friends.
“It was a lot of fun for me to write,” Mr. Carter said in a recent interview. “I learned a lot I hadn’t known before.”
One such tidbit? His mother, on visiting Rome, brushed aside prepared remarks and told the news media she was happy to be there for three reasons, among them that she had “never met an ugly Italian.”
Mrs. Carter was blunt and unorthodox in her ways, which often embarrassed her peanut farmer-turned-politician son, who spent many White House press conferences answering questions about comments his mother had made the previous day.
“She would go on the Johnny Carson show, Merv Griffin show or even Walter Cronkite and just take over the program,” Mr. Carter said. “It was a problem for me because often I would be called on to comment on what my mother had said in a ridiculous give-and-take with Merv Griffin. I would just grin and bear it.”
The book paints a picture of a woman charming enough to meet with foreign dignitaries and down home enough to prefer fishing over most any other activity. Jimmy, her eldest son, considered her his secret weapon during his 1976 presidential campaign.
“Since I ultimately defeated Gerald Ford by a very narrow margin, I think it’s accurate to say had my mama not been out on the campaign trail, I probably would not have won,” Mr. Carter said. “By the time the other candidates woke to what was happening, they had already lost the election.”
Even before her son became commander in chief, Mrs. Carter was making social and political waves. She was a nurse in the small town of Plains, Ga., often treating black families and insisting that black visitors use the front door rather than the back.
“It’s important to show the American people what a superb American citizen might be,” Mr. Carter said. “She didn’t yield to public pressure when she thought she was right.”
In 2006, Mr. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, visited Vikhroli, India, where Lillian Carter had served in the Peace Corps in 1966, at age 68, spending two years working with lepers. The couple were besieged by dozens of villagers telling stories about the Carter family matriarch, even though decades had passed.
The former president reflects on the visit in the postscript of his new book: “Our hearts filled with pride and our eyes with tears, as we thought about how many other lives had been affected by my mother.”
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