Developing

Always a gracious, dignified and understated public figure--but unlike her successors too often, never strident when in her First Lady role as an activist.

Sure hoped Rosalynn would live to see POTUS 39 attain 100 on Tuesday, October 1, 2024 (and sure hope we all witness that milestone).

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

I was hoping JC would hit triple digits just so we have at least one ex-president hit the triple digits. After 77 years of a successful, loving marriage, I don't think JC will last more than 60 days.

The Carter Center has announced the various events leading to the burial of Rosalynn Carter.

I was surprised to learn that they'll be following the LBJ model*--that is, that her grave (and presumably, her husband's as well, eventually) will be adjacent to their decades-long family home in a family plot. (As I recall from my sole visit to Plains in February 2000, the home is about a half-mile west of town, on the north side of the main drag, a modest east-west boulevard, through Plains.)

Now, that's a not-in-the-least-fancy ranch-style prairie home that is perfectly lovely. (And not unlike the suburban St. Louis house I was fortunate enough to be raised in during the '60s, so it was especially gratifying personally to finally see this single-story home (from the street, after chatting with the officer in Secret Service post at the front of the long driveway, confirming that was as close as I was to get). For sure, seeing their home in person helped place in context the Carters's remarkable story, after reading for decades about the up-from-modest-beginnings-to-wealthy-peanut-farmer POTUS.)

Yet I think it's a mistake to plant Rosalynn there, near where all those peanut plants were planted. Instead, why not instead follow the modern presidential precedent of:

Herbert and Lou Hoover (in West Branch, Iowa);
Harry and Bess Truman (Independence, Missouri);
Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower (Abeline, Kansas);
Richard and Pat Nixon (Yorba Linda, California);
Ronald and Nancy Reagan (Simi Valley, California; and
George [the elder] and Barbara [ALSO the elder] Bush (College Station, Texas).

Each of those couples are entombed at their respective Presidential libraries; in the penultimate-listed case, at the lavish, Air Force One-displaying Reagan Presidential Library, right in front of a panel of the fallen Berlin Wall.

The wonderful Carter Center is situated in an especially-sylvan section of Atlanta, and is a large compound which boasts among many other charms, a full-scale perfect replica of The Oval Office. If the Carters were to be buried instead there, SO many more Carter fans will be able to pay their respects than will EVER take the serious trouble of motoring the hours down to Plains. (It's a quite-pleasant and famously tiny burg but is famously WAY off the beaten path, more than an hour off from any interstate.) Now, Rosalynn WILL lie in state up there in Atlanta, but I really think the Carters should have, like predecessors listed above, "elected" to have "Centered" gravesites, as well.

I, for one, certainly plan on being buried on the grounds of MY future presidential library, after completing MY at-least-one (and at-most-two****) terms in The White House.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
==================* Both Lyndon and Lady Bird lie in a small (and apparently largely-neglected**) family cemetery near The LBJ Ranch, about a half-hour distant from Austin in the Lone Star State's Hill Country.
** At least it was when I surveyed it in June 2010 after touring the LBJ ranch house--where he collapsed and died in the front room on Monday afternoon, January 22, 1973***.
*** As in happened, the same date Roe-v.-Wade was announced by SCOTUS, and likewise the same date as Cosell's most famous call ("Down goes Frazier!" x3), ringside covering Foreman against Smokin' Joe, in Kingston, Jamaica.
**** That is, unless the 22nd Amendment is repealed, something I have--as did Reagan himself!--advocated. But in THAT improbable event, I aim to do FDR--who lies, along with Eleanor, six-feet-under astride the Hudson River's eastern bank, just south of the FDR estate at Hyde Park, New York, but with famed presidential canine Falla right between them!--one full term better: serving as a FIVE-term President, and thus permanently solving EVERY problem faced by this swiftly-degenerating republic-not-a-democracy in the space of a mere two decades in office.

Biden decrees it's federal flags at half-staff for the late Mrs. Carter, which I think is appropriate...IF the same honor was also extended to Nancy Reagan.

Anyone hereon recall if the late lady so often clad in red was accorded the same honor?

STYBLE/Florida

On 11/21/23 5:16 PM, radioacti...@gmail.com wrote:
> Biden decrees it's federal flags at half-staff for the late Mrs.
> Carter, which I think is appropriate...IF the same honor was also
> extended to Nancy Reagan.
>
> Anyone hereon recall if the late lady so often clad in red was
> accorded the same honor?

Flags were half-staff for Barbara Bush as well.

https://halfstaff.org/us-flags-at-half-staff-honoring-nancy-reagan/

In article <e6ddd24e-ceb0-4fc2-a171-d7135a99deebn@googlegroups.com>,
<"radioacti...@gmail.com"> wrote:

> Biden decrees it's federal flags at half-staff for the late Mrs. Carter,
> which I think is appropriate...IF the same honor was also extended to Nancy
> Reagan.
>
> Anyone hereon recall if the late lady so often clad in red was accorded the
> same honor?
>
> STYBLE/Florida

This was easily looked up, which you should have done yourself. And
why would you think that flags wouldn't be lowered for Nancy Reagan in
the first place? What nonsense.

https://www.voanews.com/a/obama-orders-flags-flown-at-half-staff-to-hono
r-nancy-reagan/3223207.html

"A White House statement issued Monday [Mar 7 2016] said Obama called
for flags to remain at half-staff at federal government buildings,
military posts, U.S. naval vessels and diplomatic missions until sunset
on the day she is buried." She was buried on Mar 11.

AF, you're right--I didn't research that and should have; appreciate the earned rebuke.

STYBLE/Florida