First In His Class (89 page)

Clinton gave
a speech that lasted thirty-two minutes, the precise length of his ill-fated address in Atlanta. Few complained. No red lights flashed. He mentioned the middle class twelve times. He recalled the lasting message of his favorite professor at Georgetown, Carroll Quigley, who said that America was the greatest country in history because it was rooted in the belief that the future would be better than the present. He talked about how his grandparents had taken care of him while
his mother
was away at nursing school. He said that southerners had been divided by race for too long. Twice he evoked John F. Kennedy. He delivered his New Democrat riffs on opportunity and responsibility and how he favored change that was neither liberal nor conservative but both and different. But there was one line in the speech that had been the easiest to write and that he now proclaimed with the most energy and emotion. It was the first line of the twenty-third paragraph. It went: “That is why today I am declaring my candidacy for President of the United States.”

His mother was there to hear him say those words. She had been waiting to hear them since he was a boy. She was the one who had taught him how to block things out and keep going through tough times. She gave him his perseverance and his optimism. Now she was determined to play out one final act of will. Four months earlier, her doctor had told her that her breast cancer had spread and that she was dying. She had not told her son. She hoped not to tell him until he was president of the United States.

Carolyn Staley and David Leopoulos were nearby, amid a group of special guests in a front-row section cordoned off with a golden rope.
The two
friends from Hot Springs were overwhelmed when Clinton finished speaking and stood on the podium with Hillary and Chelsea. They were so close to him that they could reach out and touch his feet, yet they felt oddly further from him than ever before. All three Clintons had tears in their eyes and Leopoulos thought they looked “scared to death,” as though they had stepped past a point of no return.

Tommy Caplan,
Clinton's Georgetown roommate, lingered off to the side, thinking back to their senior year in college, before Robert Kennedy was killed, when he and his friend both believed it was possible for a politician to heal a country.

Bob Reich
had flown down to Little Rock that morning, unexpected, and stood under the shade of a column as he listened. When he noticed the tear in Chelsea's eye, he became overtaken by emotion himself and thought, “I just hope to God they know what they're getting into.” At that moment, he would say later, he had a vision that he was witnessing a momentous occasion “in an extreme and classic sense of momentous.” His vision was that his old Rhodes pal at Univ College would be elected president. He left for the airport soon after the speech, without even letting Clinton know that he had been there, and flew back to Cambridge, where, once again using Strobe Talbott as his foil, he would write in the annual class letter: “Bill Clinton's candidacy makes Strobe Talbott feel old. However, the prospect that all of us will flock to Washington when Bill wins makes him feel good.”

Carl Wagner, who had spent several hours talking to Clinton and Hillary on the eve of his decision not to run four years earlier, had a sensation similar to Reich's. He thought back two decades to the summer of 1970 when he and Clinton walked up to Capitol Hill to try to persuade congressmen to cut off funds for the Vietnam War. Here, finally,
is the
day, Wagner thought. Here is the day for their generation.

Diane Blair
looked up at Hillary, with her rich red suit and brilliant red lipstick, her face made up and her hair coiffeured, and remembered their days as young professors in Fayetteville. She grinned to herself, Blair recalled, as she thought back to the era when Hillary “had looked so much less glamorous.” Then she felt a chill. It is different, she thought. Nothing will ever be the same.

Betsey Wright
could not bring herself to drive over to the Old State House. After devoting a decade of her life to Clinton's political advancement, she was feeling demoralized about him again. With Clinton's help and encouragement, she had reentered the political world in late 1990 and become the head of the state Democratic party. But one month before Clinton's announcement, their reconciliation had collapsed in a bitter misunderstanding
over money, she had been trying to raise it for the state party and felt that he had directly competed with her by soliciting funds for the DLC. The dispute had prompted her to quit as director of the state party. While Clinton was announcing for president, thanking his friends for “filling my life full of blessings beyond anything I ever deserved,” Wright was back at her house on Hill Street, alone.

Cliff Jackson
was also at home in Little Rock, sitting at his desk, his television tuned to the speech. Jackson, who had first met Clinton when they played basketball together at Oxford, had been following his fellow Arkansan's political rise with dismay and a sense of inevitability. He had distrusted Clinton since the summer of 1969, when he thought that Clinton had manipulated him in an effort to avert the military draft. He had been mostly silent about it for decades, but no more. He and several conservative associates had just formed an anti-Clinton group called the Alliance for Rebirth of an Independent America. They were raising money to fund newspaper and radio commercials attacking Clinton's record. The first one ran in the
Arkansas Democrat
on this morning of the announcement. Now Jackson, a lawyer, was spending his lunch hour alone in his den, watching his long-ago rival declare that he was a candidate for president. “I've always known that we would come to this time and place,” Jackson said to himself. “I've always known.”

When the cheering stopped, Clinton and his family entered the Old State House for a small reception.
Chelsea took
a place in line, and when she reached the front she shook her father's hand and said, “Congratulations, that was a fine speech, Governor.” Clinton spent several hours that afternoon shaking hands at a larger reception at the Excelsior. There were more receptions that night back at the mansion. By eleven, Hillary was tired and ready for bed.
Clinton stayed
up with a small band of friends who had gathered around Carolyn Staley at the piano. They sang a medley of Motown songs, followed by “Abraham, Martin and John,” the anthem to political martyrs. Clinton sat beside Carolyn on the bench and sang every verse. He knew all the words.

Soon the room fell quiet as Carolyn played the opening chords to her friend's favorite hymn. It was approaching midnight on the first day of his campaign for president and William Jefferson Clinton was in full voice. “A-a-ma-zing grace!” he sang. “How sweet the sound. That saved a-a wretch like me. I-I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.”

NOTES

11
The boys rode down: Ints. Larry Taunton, March 12, 1993; Daniel O'Connor, April 6, 1993; and Jack Mercier, April 6, 1993.

12
They made no secret: Int. Richard Stratton, April 5, 1993.

12
O'Connor knew: Int. Daniel J. O'Connor, April 6, 1993.

14
In his speeches: Int. Thomas McLarty, April 19, 1993.

15
“It's the biggest thrill”:
Hot Springs Sentinel-Record
, June 1963.

15
Amid the excitement: Int. Larry Taunton, March 12, 1993.

15
She loved to tell: Int. Virginia Kelley, Jan. 13, 1992.

15
The eighteenth annual: Boys Nation program, July 19-26, 1963, The American Legion.

15
The official politicking:
Senior Scholastic
, Sept. 23, 1963.

16
The looming danger:
The Washington Post
(cited hereafter as
WP
), July 24, 1963.

16
where the local Lions: Int. Ron Cecil, Jan. 3, 1994.

16
His mother would: Int. Virginia Kelley, Jan. 13, 1992.

16
Most of the boys: Int. O. L. Johnson, March 10, 1993.

16
With both parties:
Senior Scholastic
, Sept. 23, 1963.

17
The Arkansas luncheon quartet: Int. Larry Taunton, March 12, 1993.

17
“the cat's meow”: Int. Bill Clinton, Aug. 6, 1992.

17
Clinton wanted to be vice president: Int. John E. Mills, March 11, 1993.

18
Fred Kammer squirmed. Int. Fred Kammer, Feb. 26, 1993.

18
A year later: Int. Richard Stratton, April 5, 1993.

18
It got quiet: Ints. Richard Stralton, April 5, 1993, and Larry Taunton, March 12, 1993.

19
At quarter to ten: Transcript and tape of President Kennedy's speech to Boys Nation, July 24, 1963, JFK Library.

20
After an early lunch: Int. O. L. Johnson, March 10, 1993.

20
The next morning: Ints. Larry Taunton, March 12, 1993, and Jack Mercier, April 6, 1993.

21
Details of William J. Blythe Ill's birth from Edith Cassidy's records, in possession of her niece, Myra Irvin, and
from Hope Star
, Aug. 20, 1946.

22
one of Hope's dazzling characters: Ints. Myra Irvin, Feb. 9, 1993; Falba Lively, Feb. 8, 1993; Jack and Jimmy Hendrix, Feb. 10, 1993; and Virginia Kelley, Jan. 13, 1992, and July 12, 1993.

22
He came off the farm: Ints. Mary Nell Turner, Feb. 9, 1993; Dale Drake, Aug. 3, 1994; Jack and Jimmy Hendrix, Feb. 10, 1993; and Virginia Kelley, Jan. 13, 1992, and July 12, 1993.

23
Virginia worked:
Hope Star
, Hope High School tabloid edition, May 28, 1941.

24
“There was a sense”: Int. Jack Hendrix, Feb. 10, 1993.

24
Virginia got away: Int. Virginia Kelley, Jan. 13, 1992.

24
in his military records: Obtained in FOIA request from National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records, St. Louis. Also, W. J. Blythe military discharge records on file at Hempstead County Courthouse, Hope, Arkansas.

24
Blythe was “a handsome man”: Int. Virginia Kelley, Jan. 13, 1992.

25
She flirted through eye contact: Virginia Kelley,
Leading with My Heart
(cited hereafter as
Leading
), pp. 40-42.

25
There is a contradiction: W, J. Blythe Army discharge papers filed at Hempstead County Courthouse, Dec. 13, 1945, and Military Personnel Records in St. Louis.

25
Anyone doubting:
Leading
, p. 45.

25
She knew that he had: lnts. Virginia Kelley, Jan. 13, 1992, and July 12, 1993.

26
She did not know about the December…: Blythe's marital past is documented in courthouse records in Medill, Oklahoma; Oklahoma City; Dallas and Austin, Texas; and Ardmore, Oklahoma. Bill Clinton and Virginia Kelley were first told about Blythe's history during the 1992 presidential campaign, after Clinton's campaign office received inquiries from possible relatives. They said nothing publicly until an article by Gene Weingarten in
The Washington Post
dated June 20, 1993, revealed the possibility that Henry Leon Ritzenthaler was fathered by W. J. Blythe.

26
sailing away on a troopship: Blythe's wartime experiences are based on historical records of the 125th Ordnance Base Auto Maintenance Battalion, stored at the National Archives.

27
Hometown News
: Anderson's letters were later compiled by Hope historian Mary Nell Turner and reprinted by the Hempstead County Historical Society journal in 1991.

27
no plans to stay:
Leading
, pp. 54-55, has Virginia Kelley's version. Military records, with dates that conflict with Kelley's, are taken from Blythe discharge papers filed at Hempstead County Courthouse on Dec. 13, 1945, and from Military Personnel Records in St. Louis.

28
little time to get to know. Int. Virginia Kelley, Jan. 13, 1992, and
Leading
, pp. 56-59.