The former president is on the verge of having spent a year in hospice care, once again confounding expectations in a life that has lasted nearly a century.
She rose to become the most politically active first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. Yet her life began and ended dozens of miles from any interstate highway or even a stoplight.
“Come hell or high water, Jimmy Carter was going to use his inner resources to be there,” the presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said of Mr. Carter’s emerging from hospice care for his wife’s memorial service.