Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter has died at the age of 96, just days after it was announced that she was going into hospice care with husband Jimmy. My thoughts and prayers, as well as a deep appreciation for her legacy, go out to the entire Carter family and all my friends in Plains. They had four children, 11 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren.

Politics, which Mrs. Carter always said she loved, took them from the Governor’s Mansion to the White House in just a few years. As a Georgian who grew up in the 1970s, I was proud to be from the same state as the president of the United States. I still am. I was too young to understand politics at the time, but remember reading that President Carter’s loss to Reagan in 1980 devastated them both. Rosalynn felt completely crushed by it, as she was her husband’s biggest booster. They were married in 1946. President Carter said of her: “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished. She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

She was known for her advocacy on mental health issues during her time in Washington, and for modernizing the office of the First Lady. After the reality of the post-presidency settled in, she and Jimmy got involved with Habitat for Humanity and other noble causes. They traveled the world in service of humanitarian issues and were well-loved in their church, Maranatha Baptist, and in their little town of Plains. Her legacy is as much her love of Jimmy as her love of Plains and Georgia but in her humble manner she said “I just hope people think I did the best I could.”