• Location: on the comfy loveseat with Abby
• Mood: geeky
• Music: Ray Charles-"Georgia on My Mind"

Presidents' Children: Amy Carter

During the 1980 election, when President Jimmy Carter was running for re-election, there was a point in a debate between Carter and his opponent, then Governor Ronald Reagan, that Carter sought to reference his almost 13 year old daughter, perhaps trying to appeal to other parents as voters, perhaps trying to contrast the age difference between himself and his opponent. In the debate, moderated by Howard K. Smith and presented by the League of Women Voters, (a debate ranked among the highest ratings of any television show in the previous decade) Carter's campaign sought to portray Reagan as a reckless "war hawk" and a "dangerous right-wing radical". During the debate, Carter referred to a consultation he had with his young daughter Amy about nuclear weapons policy. President Carter said he had asked Amy what the most important issue in that election was and she said, "the control of nuclear arms." Instead of making Carter look relatable, the comment became fodder for comedians and cartoonists. A famous political cartoon, published the day after Reagan's landslide victory, showed Amy Carter sitting in Jimmy's lap with her shoulders shrugged asking "the economy?



Amy Lynn Carter was born on October 19, 1967 in Plains, Georgia. Three years after she was born, in 1970, her father was elected Governor of Georgia, and six years later, in 1976, he was elected President of the United States. Amy was raised in Plains where she lived until her father was elected president. At the age of nine she moved with her family into the White House. From the time that Carter became Governor in 1971, Amy had a nanny named Mary Prince. After her father's presidency ended, she returned with her family to Georgia and attended her senior year of high school at Woodward Academy in Atlanta.

During the time that Amy Carter lived in the White House from the ages of nine to thirteen, she was the subject of a lot of media attention. None of the Presidents since John F. Kennedy had young children, and the media took advantage of the photo opportunities. While in the White House, Amy had a Siamese cat named "Misty Malarky Ying Yang", the last cat to occupy the White House until "Socks", owned by the Clinton family. She was also given an elephant from Sri Lanka as a gift, which was promptly given to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

Amy Carter attended Washington, D.C., public schools, including Stevens Elementary School and Hardy Middle School. Later, when she returned to Georgia, she attended Tri-County High School in Buena Vista, Georgia until her senior year.

Amy Carter was often seen roller skating through the White House's East Room. She had a treehouse on the South Lawn, but probably had the only treehouse monitored by Secret Service agents. At a time that followed Watergate, when media scrutiny rose, Amy Carter did not receive the "hands off" treatment given to previous children in the White House. Reporters would question her when given the opportunity and she was frequently photographed. Once, when a reporter asked if she had any message for the children of America, Amy replied with a simple "no". On another occasion, she was seen reading a book during a state dinner at the White House, which some members of the media viewed as offensive to the president's foreign guests.

After leaving the white house and finishing high school, Amy Carter used her celebrity status to supplement her political activism. She participated in a number of sit-ins and protests during the 1980s and early 1990s, aimed at changing U.S. foreign policy towards South African apartheid and Central America. She was arrested in 1986, along with activist Abbie Hoffman and 13 others, during a demonstration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The group were protesting CIA recruitment there. She was acquitted of all charges in a well-publicized trial in Northampton, Massachusetts. During the trial she was represented by Attorney Leonard Weinglass, the same lawyer who defended Hoffman in the Chicago Seven trial in the 1960s. During the trial, Weinglass successfully argued that, because the CIA was involved in criminal activity in Central America and other hotspots, preventing it from recruiting on campus was justified. The trial occurred during Carter's sophomore year at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It apparently had an affect on her academic performance as she was eventually dismissed from Brown for academic reasons.

Amy Carter earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (BFA) from the Memphis College of Art and a master's degree in art history from Tulane University in New Orleans. She illustrated her father's 1995 children's book The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer.

In September 1996, Amy Carter married computer consultant James Gregory Wentzel, whom she had met while attending Tulane. In her wedding ceremony she chose not to be given away by her father, stating that she "belonged to no one". Carter and Wentzel both kept their own family names. The couple moved to the Atlanta area, where they continue to live. On July 29, 1999, Amy Carter gave birth to a son named Hugo James Wentzel. Hugo attended Woodward Academy, the same high school that his mother graduated from.



Since the late 1990s, Carter has maintained a low public profile. She no longer participes in public protests and does not grant interviews. She is a member of the board of counselors of the Carter Center that advocates human rights and diplomacy as established by her father.