Gloria Carter Spann

Background

Gloria Carter Spann was born on October 22, 1926, in Plains, Georgia. She was the second of four children born to James Earl Carter Sr. and Lillian Gordy Carter, and the first daughter. Spann was the smartest, most fascinating, most gorgeous, outgoing, and brilliant of her siblings, according to many people, including their mother. The connection between Spann and the future president was tense as youngsters who fought for their parental love, but the two became extraordinarily close in their later years.

In June 1944, Spann graduated from high school and enrolled at Georgia Southwestern College, where she began studying journalism. Her aspirations were thwarted when she married a military hero from Americus called William Everett Hardy. The Carters were against the marriage since the groom was a former pharmacy store clerk. At the time, this was not a job for well-to-do families. William Everett (Hardy) Spann was born in 1946 as a result of the marriage. Spann returned to Georgia from Texas in 1949, and her father, Earl Carter, was outraged by the terrible beatings she endured at the hands of her husband. With the help of her father, Spann had her marriage annulled in 1949. On December 15, 1950, Spann married Walter Guy Spann, a farmer from Webster County, Georgia, and he adopted the son of her first marriage.

Despite having some sort of celebrity before Jimmy Carter’s election, Spann was not dragged into the spotlight until her brother was elected president. During her brother’s presidency, she was most likely the sibling that avoided the spotlight the most. Before her brother’s election to the presidency in 1976, Spann worked on multiple campaigns for him. She made many phone calls and distributed several brochures in support of Carter’s governorship aspirations in Georgia. Spann kept a low profile when she and her husband, Walter, cycled across the country on their Harley-Davidson motorbikes. Span released a volume of letters written by her mother in 1977, documenting her mother’s challenges and successes while serving with the Peace Corps in India for two years. She and her spouse were both members of Union Life, a religious brotherhood. Spann was one of the first women accepted into Harley Davidson’s 100,000 Mile Club, and she was selected Most Outstanding Female Motorcyclist in 1978. She also worked as a biker rights activist. Spann was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the fall of 1989. The cancer was discovered in its late stages when palliative care was the only option. Spann had been a smoker but had quit in the years before her death. Like her two younger brothers who died of cancer in their 50s in the 1980s, Spann refused life-extending medication. She died of pancreatic cancer complications on March 5, 1990, at the age of 63.