By Elise Hammond, CNN
Country music superstar couple Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood performed John Lennon's "Imagine" during Rosalynn Carter's tribute service Tuesday.
Earlier this year, Brooks and Yearwood participated in Habitat for Humanity’s 37th Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project, picking up the hammer for the Carters.
Jason Carter, Rosalynn Carter's grandson, paid tribute to his grandmother's work as an advocate of mental health reform, noting that she was way ahead of her time when deciding to take on the issue.
"Her advocacy for mental health was a 50-year climb that is as remarkable as any other," Jason said.
"But if you imagine just how far our society has come in the last five years on issues of mental health, and you think that she decided in 1970 to tackle the ancient stigma associated with mental illness, it is remarkable how far she could see and how far she was willing to walk," he added.
He said that his grandmother's work had a large impact, including within the Carter family.
"And that effort changed lives and it saved lives, including in my own family," he added.
Journalist Judy Woodruff described former how Rosalynn Carter changed the definition of what it meant to be the first lady.
The two first met in 1970 when Rosalynn was campaigning for Jimmy Carter’s gubernatorial campaign and Woodruff was a young reporter at an Atlanta television station. Woodruff covered the Carters both when Jimmy Carter was the governor and when he became the president.
“I know my respect and admiration for her goes back to the very beginning,” she said.
“What we witnessed was a first lady who saw her role as going well beyond the essential warm and welcoming host to being a close and trusted, yes, adviser. In essence an extension of the president himself,” Woodruff said.
Woodruff talked about how Rosalynn would sit in on cabinet meetings and immersed herself in learning about subjects that mattered to her.
Woodruff talked about a diplomatic trip Rosalynn took to the Caribbean, Central and South America in the early months of the Carter administration. She wanted to bring back concerns to her husband, Woodruff said, especially ones revolving around human rights.
“I'll never forget the looks on the faces of some of the Latin leaders as they realized that they were dealing with a serious, supremely well-informed and well-briefed representative of the president of the United States,” she said, as one of the journalists on the trip. “The person closer to him than anyone else. Criticism ahead of time that she would be dismissed melted away.”
Jimmy Carter, 99, is attending the tribute service for his wife, Rosalynn, but the former president isn't able to speak — so their daughter, Amy Lynn Carter, read one of his love letters on his behalf.
"This is from a letter he wrote 75 years ago while he was serving in the Navy," Amy said before reading this passage:
"My darling, every time I have ever been away from you, I have been thrilled when I return to discover just how wonderful you are. While I am away, I try to convince myself that you really are not, could not be as sweet and beautiful as I remember. But when I see you, I fall in love with you all over again. Does that seem strange to you? It doesn't to me. Goodbye, darling. Until tomorrow. Jimmy."
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus followed the reading with a performance of "Wondrous Love."
From CNN’s Pamela Kirkland and Fabiana Chaparro
Former president Jimmy Carter is seated in the first row with his sons, John William “Jack” Carter, James Earl “Chip” Carter III and Donnel Jeffrey “Jeff” Carter and his daughter, Amy Lynn Carter, during the tribute service for his wife.
Amy was seen holding her father's hand during a performance of "Morning Has Broken" by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus.
The service honoring former first lady Rosalynn Carter is being held at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church.
President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton joined the family in the first row along with former first ladies Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, Laura Bush and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
From CNN's Stephen Collinson
So close were Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, that it is jarring to see him without her.
The former president’s deeply poignant arrival in church a reclined wheelchair, just before his wife’s flower-covered casket, ends their common journey in life that lasted nearly 80 years.
They first met in the last summer of World War II. Carter, then a US Naval Academy student, told his mother after his first date with Eleanor Rosalynn Smith that, "she's the girl I want to marry."
The couple, who decades later would become the longest-betrothed presidential couple in history, wed in 1946.
When he published his book “A Full Life” shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer in 2015, Carter contemplated his own mortality. He wrote that he was at peace with his accomplishments as president as well as his unrealized goals. He said he and Rosalynn were “blessed with good health and look to the future with eagerness and confidence, but are prepared for inevitable adversity when it comes."
Even the Carters couldn’t beat time and that adversity eventually came. And Carter, 99, who is himself receiving hospice care, will be left to face his final days without his partner in life and politics.
Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter’s son, James Earl “Chip” Carter III, welcomed the crowd who gathered at a church in Atlanta to honor the life of his mother by talking about how much she influenced him and his life.
He said Rosalynn was the “glue that held our family together through the ups and downs and thicks and thins of our family’s politics.”
He said she believed in her children and took care of them and credited his mother for getting him into rehab for his drug and alcohol addiction.
“She saved my life,” he said.
Carter III also talked about the impact Rosalynn had not only on the family but on Americans across the nation.
“She told me that when dad started running for president, that the thing that she enjoyed the most was the people that she met across the country,” he said, adding that when she was first lady, she tried to operate with her faith at the forefront.
From CNN's Zoe Sottile and Christina Maxouris
A tribute service honoring former first lady Rosalynn Carter has started at a church in Atlanta.
She lay in repose Monday evening at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta. On Tuesday morning before coming to the church, a departure ceremony took place at the Carter Presidential Center.
On the way to Atlanta on Monday, the former first lady’s motorcade made a few brief stops, including at her alma mater, Georgia Southwestern State University, where officials laid wreaths at a bronze statue dedicated to her.
From CNN's Zoe Sottile and Christina Maxouris
Former President Jimmy Carter has arrived at the tribute service of his wife, Rosalynn Carter.
People have gathered at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church at Emory University in Atlanta for the observation. President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden and former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are also in attendance. They are seated in the front row of the church.
Jimmy Carter, who is 99 and receiving hospice care at home, had been expected to attend the memorial. He is “very physically diminished” and plans to stay throughout but won’t deliver any remarks, his grandson Jason Carter said.
“But we all know that he wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he added.
The Carters were married for more than 77 years.
“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” Jimmy Carter said in a statement after his wife’s passing. “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.”
