1. A Portrait of Miss Lillian

Lillian Gordy Carter, the president’s mother, lived life firmly on her own terms.

She was famously accompanied by Andy Warhol, at age 79, to a party in 1977 at Studio 54. Mr. Warhol made this portrait of her, one of three that have been displayed in the Carter Center in Atlanta.

In her early 20s, she started a long career in nursing. And she gave birth to Jimmy at the hospital where she worked, not at home, making him the first president to be born in a hospital.

Ms. Carter flouted the racist customs of the Jim Crow era in rural southwest Georgia, imprinting her four children with broad-minded social views.

She plunged herself into the family-farm business after being widowed at 54. In her late 60s, she applied to the Peace Corps and was sent to India for two years, assigned to work on family-planning efforts. On the side, she bent the rules to bring medical treatments to destitute people in her village.

Americans came to know their presidential mother as Miss Lillian, a telegenic celebrity with a quick, sometimes salty, wit.

During the 1976 presidential campaign, she became a favorite of reporters for her reliably colorful remarks. The Times found her sitting in a rocking chair and holding forth at the Carter campaign headquarters: “Someone asked me the other day, do I ever tell a lie? And I said, ‘Yeah, I make up for Jimmy.’”