Amy Carter
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Amy Lynn Carter (born October 19, 1967) is the youngest of the four children and the only daughter of U.S. president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter.
Amy was born and raised, until her father's presidency, in Plains, Georgia, with her father serving as governor of the state for much of the period. Amy has three brothers who are roughly 15 to 20 years older than she.
Amy Carter lived in the White House for four years from the age of 9. She was the subject of much media attention during this period as young children had not lived in the White House since the early 1960s presidency of John F. Kennedy. While in the White House, she had a Siamese cat named "Misty Malarky Ying Yang", who would be the last cat to occupy the White House until Socks, owned by Bill Clinton. She also had 39 teddy bears. Amy Carter attended Hardy Middle School while in D.C.[1][2]
President Carter mentioned Amy during a 1980 debate with Ronald Reagan, when he said he had asked her what the most important issue in that election was and she said, "the control of nuclear arms". Once, when asked whether she had any message for the children of America, Amy replied with a simple "No".[3]
Amy Carter later became known for her political activism, participating in a number of sit-ins and protests during the 1980s and early 1990s, aimed at changing U.S. foreign policy towards South Africa and Central America. Along with activist Abbie Hoffman and thirteen others, she was arrested during a 1987 demonstration at the University of Massachusetts, for protesting CIA recruitment there. She was acquitted of all charges in a well publicized trial in Northampton, Massachusetts. Attorney Leonard Weinglass, who defended Abbie Hoffman in the Chicago Seven trial in the 1960s, utilized the necessity defense, successfully arguing that CIA crimes in Central America and other hotspots were equivalent to trespassing in a burning building.[4] This occurred during Amy's sophomore year at Brown University located in Providence, Rhode Island. Later, Amy left Brown due to unrelated and unpublicized issues.
Amy Carter earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (BFA) from the Memphis College of Art and a Master's degree from Tulane University in New Orleans.
Carter collaborated with her father on the 1995 children's book The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer (ISBN 0-8129-2731-1); he wrote the story and she illustrated it.
In September 1996, Carter married computer consultant James Gregory Wentzel, whom she had met while attending Tulane. Ms. Carter chose not to be "given away," stating that she "belonged to no one." Ms. Carter and Mr. Wentzel both kept their own family names. The couple moved to the Atlanta area, where they have focused on raising their son Hugo James Wentzel (born July 29, 1999). Since the late 1990s, Carter has maintained a low profile, neither participating in public protests, nor granting interviews; she is a board member of the Carter Center that advocates human rights and diplomacy as established by her father.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Whatever happened to Amy Carter? Profile by Sara Steindorf in The Christian Science Monitor, February 17, 2000
