Rozella Carter

Rozella Marie Carter, better known as “Rose”, completed her earthly journey at Helmwood Health Care, her home for the past 5 years. That trip commenced 97.5 years ago on July 28, 1928 in Milford, Ohio, where she was greeted by her parents, the late Freda and Stanley Miller, and her late sister, Betty, 2 years old, and later joined by a brother, the late Orie Miller.

Tragedy struck the family when Rose was 5; during the Great Depression, Stanley died, leaving his wife and three children under the age of seven. The family moved in with Freda’s widowed father. To help feed her family, Freda “took in” washing and accepted governmental aid. The experience of being “on Relief”, as Rose described, marked Rose’s personality: she was frugal, hardworking, resilient, accepting and empathic to others’ pain and disadvantages. In spite of difficulties, her family members energized resilience with much laughter and frequent barn dances, while reminding each other that “This, too, shall pass!” She, like Freda had faith in an afterlife much better than this life. Rose, too, had an optimistic, fun loving “free child” personality which kept her playing and laughing and drew people to her.

In 1946, Rose met and married a dashing soldier, Arthur Lee Carter, Jr. and moved to Fort Riley, Kansas where their first daughter, Jacqueline Kaye Carter Gerard, was born in 1948. Jackie was joined by Linda Jo Carter Biddle in 1952, while Lee was on a Korean War year long deployment. In 1954 Rose, who did not travel widely, was challenged to independently bring a preschooler and toddler to the Alaskan territory via cross country train and ship with numerous connections. Even though she was afraid, she did it.

She loved this ”child centered period“ of her life, adored sewing clothes, being a room mother, taking care of these daughters and her husband and watching her daughters and husband achieve their goals and cheering them on. Throughout her life, she was very much drawn to children and they to her.

As her family members succeeded, she felt a need for new challenges. To prepare for a job outside of home, she enrolled in Elizabethtown Community College taking secretarial skill courses, hoping that she would find a job to use them. A new orthodontist, Dr. Mike Harris, who had been at UK with her son-in-law, Dr. Paul Biddle, met and offered her a job which she continued until he retired. Later he would say that hiring her “went against everything he had been taught about hiring a friend” but that “she had been the best hire of his life.” She loved working for Dr. Harris and later Dr. Duplessis until she was 83. She delighted in celebrating the transformations of young patients and the relationship with their parents. And she was thrilled to be Mimi to Karen, Lindsey, Whit, and Carter.

In the twilight of her life, Rose experienced many losses: Lee, her husband died in 1997, and Linda died, in 2010, and due to a stroke and dementia, in 2019 she lost living independently in her beloved home. But even though she and life had changed, we continued to see flashes of her caretaking,kindness, humor, and resilience, especially when her great grandchildren, Lee, Eddie, Paul, Andrew, Harper, Luke and Benji visited . We, her family, give abundant thanks for her life.

We thank her caregivers at Tender Touch, Robinbrooke Memory Care, and Helmwood Healthcare. If you wish to honor Rose, in lieu of flowers, please make a contribution to First Presbyterian Church, Elizabethtown. In the line, write Children’s Fund.

Visitation will be held in the sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church, 1016 Pear Orchard Road, Elizabethtown, KY on Saturday, February 7, from 1-2:50 p.m. A Celebration of Life will follow at 3 p.m.