Who died in 2023? A look back at some of the year's most memorable passings
On a November afternoon in tiny Plains, Georgia, former first daughter Amy Carter, now a 56-year-old woman out of the spotlight for decades, reluctantly approached the microphone at the funeral for her mother, Rosalynn Carter, 96. “I chose something that is hard to read without crying,’’ she said. “My mom spent most of her life in love with my dad.” She then unfolded a letter that Jimmy Carter had written to his wife 75 years ago when he was in the Navy. Unable to speak, the former president, 99, listened from a hospital bed wheeled into the crowded church. “My darling,” the letter began. The televised service and VIP-filled pews – three presidents, all five living first ladies – was familiar and somber, and yet marked a brief return to normalcy in today’s chaotic culture of mean-spirited memes and digital cynicism. Death and remembrance do that. In this year’s annual “Passages,” USA TODAY’s roundup of the most notable deaths of 2023, there are lifetimes of such losses. The accompl...