“I do not want to achieve immortality through my work,” Woody Allen once wrote. “I want to achieve immortality by not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen. I want to live on in my apartment.”

While Allen is quite unlikely to get his wish, many other Americans should live on through their good works, inspiring their countrymen. Here are six of them, some better known than others, who died in 2023.

A champion of better treatment for “mentally and emotionally handicapped” people, Rosalynn Carter volunteered at a hospital in Atlanta to learn about current practices when her husband was governor of Georgia, and then helped establish 134 daycare centers for them. As First Lady in the White House, she served as honorary chair of President Carter’s Mental Health Commission, endorsed insurance coverage for mental as well as physical illnesses and played a pivotal role in passage of the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980.

When the Carters returned to Georgia in 1981 and cofounded the Carter Center, Rosalynn traveled the world supporting human rights, free and fair elections, and universal health care. She helped build over 4,000 homes for Habitat for Humanity. In 1987, the Carters wrote “Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life.”

A staff writer at the New Yorker, Paul Brodeur was a crusader for a safer environment. In the 1970s and ’80s, he presented evidence, covered up by manufacturers and company doctors, that asbestos causes cancer. His exposes helped persuade Congress to remove asbestos from schools and government buildings. Brodeur also documented the role of chlorofluorocarbons in aerosol sprays and air conditioners in depleting the ozone layer. An international treaty........

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