Famous first child Amy Carter back in Washington for late father’s service

WASHINGTON – Former President Jimmy Carter’s youngest child and only daughter was among those who gathered in Washington Tuesday to honor her father on the highest national stage.

Amy Carter, 57, sat with her older brothers — Jack, Chip and Jeff — and other members of the Carter family inside the Capitol rotunda as members of Congress and other leaders paid their respects to the late 39th president.

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Carter’s casket was brought to the ornate hall on Capitol Hill via a horse-drawn caisson. The funeral procession down the streets of Washington was to mirror his 1977 inauguration parade, when Carter and his wife Rosalynn walked from the Capitol to the White House. Amy Carter, then 9, joined her parents for part of the journey.

Amy Carter quickly became an object of public fascination during her father’s presidency. From dining with movie stars to roller skating with friends on the South Lawn, her life as a child in the White House — the first since John F. Kennedy’s Camelot more than a decade earlier — was well documented.

She was also a political symbol before the age of 10. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter turned down the capital’s elite private schools to enroll Amy, whose older brothers were already adults, at a primary school. Carter was only the second president after Theodore Roosevelt to enroll his child in elementary school.

Later, as a teenager and young adult, Amy Carter made waves of her own, with several arrests related to protests against South African apartheid as well as US involvement in Nicaragua.

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But since his youth, the youngest child of the first family has largely retreated from the public eye in favor of a quiet life in his home state of Georgia. She was at one time a part-time art teacher at a private school in Atlanta The New York Times reported.

Amy Carter has always preferred her privacy, those who knew her told the Times. Her return to Washington this week marks one of only a few moments in the spotlight in recent years.

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After the death of Rosalynn Carter in November 2023, Amy Carter spoke at a commemoration in Atlanta and read an emotional love letter from his father to his mother, dated 75 years earlier.

“My dear, every time I’ve ever been away from you, I’ve been thrilled to return to find how wonderful you are,” she read from her father’s words. “…Goodbye, honey. See you tomorrow, Jimmy.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Amy Carter returns to father’s funeral after retiring from public life