Let’s offer a respectful Bawlamer farewell to Rosalynn Carter, the former First Lady who came here at least twice in the course of her 96 years, once doing heavenly work building homes for the needy, and once meeting the legendary City Councilman Dominic “Mimi” DiPietro.
As she now goes to her grave, leaving behind her husband of 77 years, former President Jimmy Carter, it’s not easy to say which trip here became a more lasting memory for Mrs. Carter: building homes or meeting Mimi.
She and her husband were deeply involved in the Habitat for Humanity effort. In their retirement from political life, they spent decades helping to build decent, affordable housing for poor people.
The Carters were both in West Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood a few years after Jimmy’s presidential loss to Ronald Reagan. Television cameras ringed the area to watch them hammering and sawing and lugging. It might have been a classic public relations blitz, with the Carters here just long enough to get a few seconds on the six o’clock news.
But for them, helping the poor was serious business. There was Jimmy, with a tool kit attached to his belt, hammering nails, measuring stuff, working up a sweat doing hard work. And there was Rosalynn, doing her own bit.
To be honest about it, neither of them was very friendly that day. Reporters who’d shown up, hoping for a quick interview with a couple of do-gooder celebs, couldn’t get close to them. I don’t remember a single smile out of either of them.
They were too busy working. They didn’t come here looking for fame. This wasn’t a charm offensive, it was a wake-up call to America on the need for affordable housing. They weren’t like other retired politicians, who left office and then cashed in for easy bucks giving after-dinner speeches.
There were many who watched the Carters doing such work for many years after they left the White House, and said, “Jimmy wasn’t a great president, but he was a great ex-president.”
And he always gave full credit to Rosalynn, whom he sometimes referred to as his “co-president.”
As “co-president,” she got to meet all kinds of fascinating folks , including the great Baltimore City Councilman Mimi DiPietro.
What made him a great councilman? Mimi understood the job. He wasn’t one of those City Hall types who thought the important part of the job was waiting for TV cameras to show up on Monday evenings to watch a bunch of speechifying. Some of those council people spent the rest of their work week doing nothing to warrant a paycheck.
Mimi was different. He sat at his desk every day, much of it on the phone, helping constituents. Some needed jobs, some needed streets or playgrounds cleaned. Mimi was there for them.
And he was legendary for one more thing. He fractured the language. He was a third-grade dropout who couldn’t surround an idea with the English language without getting himself in trouble.
He thought the problem in the city’s criminal courts was “too much flea bargaining.” When he was introduced to Pope John Paul, he called him “Mister Pope.” When his brother had an intestinal operation, Mimi said doctors “must have pulled four feet of testicle out of that man.”
And then there was the day he was introduced to Rosalynn Carter. She offered him a smile. He offered her his best effort to show himself a man of sophistication, a loyal Democrat and a man who appreciated beauty.
With pure respect, he told the First Lady of the land, “I’d kiss you on the mouth, but I don’t know who you been with.”
It’s hard to know which memories Rosalynn Carter might have taken to the grave, she had so many experiences over the course of a life well lived.
But I’m betting she remembered Mimi, who offered her a smile.
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