Love For Rwandan Orphans

Tracy Smith On How One American Is Changing Lives

(CBS)  The Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith spent her summer vacation in Rwanda. The main reason she went was to see an old friend who is doing something most people only wish they could: taking care of orphans.

In a tiny corner of the tiny African country, Smith observes, a small miracle unfolds every day. The Imbabazi Orphanage is home to more than 100 children who, for reasons often too horrible to mention, have nowhere else to go.

Imbabazi's founder and guardian angel is Rosamond Carr. At an age when many people are well past retirement, Carr is still on the move.

"We're leaving in November," she tells Smith. "We're going up to my farm. I've built two beautiful buildings there. One of them was paid for by Columbus, Ohio."

Private donors keep her in business; the children keep her alive. Carr has lived 93 years, and how full those 93 years have been.

She was born Rosamond Halsey, the daughter of a New Jersey banker. She grew up in the roaring '20s with a taste for fashion and parties. In 1942 she married British explorer Kenneth Carr, who brought her on an expedition along the Congo River. Her marriage to Kenneth fell apart a decade later, but Rosamond Carr couldn't bring herself to leave Africa and she got a job managing a flower farm.

In 1972 Carr met another American woman in Rwanda, Dian Fossey. Their sometimes stormy relationship was featured in the movie "Gorillas In The Mist," with Julie Harris as Carr.

"She'd just come and move into my bedroom, and I'd move into the guest room," Carr says. "I wasn't thrilled."

The real-life Rosamond Carr never remarried and lived quietly on her farm until 1994, when the world's attention would turn to her beloved Rwanda with anguish and horror.