Living History (27 page)

More and more, his immediate world seemed to shrink as he lost his father and both brothers in a few short years in the mid-sixties. Then he decided in the early seventies that he had made and saved enough money, so he quit working and dismantled his small company. During my high school and college years, our relationship increasingly was defined either by silence, as I searched for something to say to him, or by arguments, which I often provoked, because I knew he would always engage with me over politics and culture―

Vietnam, hippies, bra-burning feminists, Nixon. I also understood that even when he erupted at me, he admired my independence and accomplishments and loved me with all his heart.

I recently reread letters he wrote me when I was at Wellesley and Yale, usually in response to a despondent collect call home in which I expressed doubts about my abilities or confusion about where my life was heading. I doubt anyone meeting my father or being on the receiving end of his caustic criticism would ever have imagined the tender love and advice he offered to buck me up, straighten me out and keep me going.

I also respected my father’s willingness to change his views, although he would rarely admit he had. He started out in life inheriting every prejudice imaginable in his workingclass, Protestant family against Democrats, Catholics, Jews and blacks―and anyone else considered outside the tribe. When I got exasperated by these attitudes during our summer visits to Lake Winola, I would announce to all the Rodhams that I intended to grow up and marry a Catholic Democrat―a fate they considered the worst I could meet. Over time, my father softened and changed, largely because of personal experiences with all kinds of people. He owned a building in downtown Chicago with a black man whom he came to respect and admire, causing him to change his views on race. When I grew up and fell in love with a Southern Baptist Democrat, my father was bewildered, but he rallied and became one of Bill’s strongest supporters.

When my parents moved to Little Rock in 1987, they bought a condo next door to the one owned by Larry Curbo, a nurse, and Dr. Dillard Denson, a neurologist. They were among my mother’s closest friends and began checking in on my parents, visiting with my dad, talking about the stock market or politics and helping out my mother around the house. When Bill and I came to visit, the military and Secret Service used their house as the command center. One night my parents were watching a television show that featured gay characters. When my father expressed his disapproval of homosexuals, my mother said, “What about Dillard and Larry?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

So my mother explained to my father that his dear friends and neighbors were a gay couple in a long-lasting committed relationship. One of my father’s last stereotypes fell.

Larry and Dillard visited my father in the hospital as he lay in a coma. One night Larry relieved my mother for a few hours so she could go home and get some rest. And it was Larry who held my father’s hand and said goodbye as he died. Perhaps fittingly, my father spent his last days at St. Vincent’s, a wonderful Catholic hospital, a sign that another of his prejudices had disappeared.

Early the next morning, Bill, Chelsea and I, joined by an intimate group of family and friends, flew back to Little Rock for a memorial service at the First United Methodist Church. With us were my brother Tony, his future wife, Nicole Boxer, my dear friend Diane Blair, who had been staying with us, Bruce Lindsey, Vince Foster and Webb Hubbell.

I was touched that Al and Tipper flew down with Mack McLarty, one of Bill’s best friends from growing up and now White House Chief of Staff, along with Mack’s wife, Donna. The church on that Good Friday was filled for “A Service of Death and Resurrection”

led by the church’s senior minister, the Rev. Ed Matthews, and the minister who had married Bill and me, the Rev. Vic Nixon. After the service, our family, joined by Dillard and Larry, Carolyn and Dr. John Holden, one of my brothers’ best friends from Park Ridge, took my father home to Scranton. In character, my father had chosen and paid for his gravesite years before.

We had a second funeral service at the Court Street Methodist Church, down the street from the house where my dad had grown up. Bill delivered a loving eulogy that conveyed Hugh Rodham’s brusqueness and devotion:

“In 1974 when I made my first political race, I ran in a congressional district where there were a lot of Republicans from the Middle West. And my future fatherin-law came down in a Cadillac with an Illinois license plate; never told a living soul I was in love with his daughter, just went up to people and said, ‘I know that you’re a Republican and so am I. I think Democrats are just one step short of communism, but this kid’s all right.’

“

We laid him to rest in the Washburn Street Cemetery. It was a cold, rain-drenched April day, and my thoughts were as gloomy as the leaden sky. I stood listening to the Military Honor Guard’s bugler playing taps. After the burial, we went with some of my father’s old friends to a local restaurant, where we reminisced.

We were supposed to be celebrating my father’s life, but I was overwhelmed with sadness for what he would now be missing. I thought about how much he enjoyed seeing his son-in-law serve as President and how much he wanted to watch Chelsea grow up.

When Bill was preparing his eulogy on the plane from Little Rock, we were all telling stories. Chelsea reminded us that her PopPop had always said that when she graduated from college, he would rent a big limousine and pick her up wearing a white suit. He had many dreams that wouldn’t be realized. But I was thankful for the life, opportunities and dreams he passed along to me.

Bill, Chelsea and I wanted to spend Easter at Camp David, and we invited our immediate family and the friends who had come to Scranton. We all needed time to unwind after the funeral and the long weeks of worry, and Camp David was the only haven where we would have the peace and privacy we craved. Jackie Kennedy Onassis had encouraged me to shelter my intimate family life in this protected retreat, surrounded by a forest preserve in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. Her simple, pragmatic advice, as always, had proved invaluable. I was also pleased that my father had visited the retreat after the inauguration.

We could remember his presence in its rustic cabins and his delight in seeing the place that President Eisenhower had renamed for his grandson, David. Now we were with my father’s grandchild, Chelsea, to mourn his passing.

That Easter weekend was cold and rainy, and it fit my mood perfectly. I went for a long walk in the drizzle with my mother, and I asked her if she wanted to live with us in the White House. In her characteristically independent manner, she said that she would stay awhile, but that she wanted to go home to attend to all the issues accompanying my father’s death. She thanked me for inviting Dillard Denson and Larry Curbo to Camp David. She knew they would continue to be valuable friends as she faced her life alone.

We attended Easter service in the recently built Evergreen Chapel, an A-frame of wood and stained glass that fits beautifully into its wooded setting. I sat in my pew and thought of how my father used to embarrass my brothers and me with his loud, off-key hymn singing. I share his tone deafness, but that morning I sang out, hoping the discordant notes might reach the heavens.

Physically and emotionally drained, I probably should have taken more time to rest and to let myself grieve. But I couldn’t ignore the call back to work. Ira had been sending me SOS signals, warning that the health care initiative was being sidelined by budgetary battles. And there was Chelsea, who needed to return to school and to her life. After sharing Easter dinner together with our guests, Bill, Chelsea and I returned to Washington.

The moment I walked into our bedroom on Sunday evening, I sensed something was wrong. I began to unpack our suitcases and realized that a few pieces of furniture were out of place. Items on our bed side tables had been moved around, and there was a gash in the wooden television cabinet that stood between the large windows on the South Wall. I went back into the West Sitting Hall and family den and noticed that other furniture was not where it had been. I called Gary Walters, the chief usher, and asked him what had happened while we were gone. He told me that a security team had searched all of our possessions to check for bugging devices and other breaches of security. He had forgotten to tell me about it, he said.

Nobody on my staff or on the President’s staff had been informed about the operation.

Helen Dickey, a friend from Little Rock who was staying up on the third floor, heard noises Saturday night and went downstairs to see what was happening. She was confronted by armed men dressed in black, who ordered her out of the area.

I suddenly remembered the Rush Limbaugh note placed in the Lincoln bed for Harry and Linda. I wondered, too, about the source of some bizarre stories that had appeared in the press, one citing an anonymous Secret Service employee who claimed that I had thrown a lamp at my husband. Under other circumstances, it would have been laughable that a major periodical chose to run such a ridiculous story based on nothing more than malicious rumor.

As with many of the good and bad things that have been said about me over the years, reports about my “legendary temper” are exaggerated. But in this case, I admit that I was ready to explode. I called Mack McLarty, Bill’s Chief of Staff, and David Watkins, the White House Director of Management and Administration, to let them know exactly what I had discovered and what I thought about it. I wanted to make sure this sort of thing never happened again without our knowledge.

Mack and David let me vent for a while. After looking into it, they reported that arrangements for the search had been made through the usher’s office. Mack issued orders that it was not to happen again unless he was informed, and the President approved.

I was grieving my father’s death, and I was undone by the invasion of privacy. Yes, we were living in a house that belongs to our nation. But there’s an understanding that the individuals who occupy it are allowed some rooms of their own. Ours had been violated, and it made me feel that there was no place where my family and I could go to work through our sadness alone and in peace.

I didn’t get much sleep that night, and it was a particularly short one. Starting at about 5 A.M., parents and children were lining up outside the gates for the annual Easter Egg Roll that takes place on the South Lawn Easter Monday. When I looked out the window at around 8 A.M., I saw thousands of children gathered, spoons in hand, waiting to push brightly colored Easter eggs across the grass. They were thrilled to be there, and there was no way I would let my personal concerns ruin their day. So I got dressed and stepped out into the sun. At first I was going through the motions. Then the children’s excitement and laughter, rippling across the wide green lawn, touched my heart and lifted my spirits.

The last few months had been a difficult beginning to a pitiless season in Washington.

Looking back, I realize that what sustained me most through this time was what sustained me throughout our White House tenure: my family, friends and faith. My religious faith has always been a crucial part of my life. Until he had his fatal stroke, my father knelt by his bed to say his prayers every night. And I shared his belief in the power and importance of prayer. I’ve often told audiences that if I hadn’t believed in prayer before 1992, life in the White House would have persuaded me.

Before my father’s stroke, I received an invitation from my good friend Linda Lader, who, with her husband, Phil, launched the Renaissance Weekends Bill, Chelsea and I had attended since 1983 over New Years’. These gatherings were always stimulating and led to many important friendships in our lives.

Linda invited Tipper and me to a luncheon sponsored by a women’s prayer group that included Democrats and Republicans, among them Susan Baker, the wife of the first President Bush’s Secretary of State, James Baker; Joanne Kemp, the wife of former Republican Congressman (and future Vice Presidential candidate) Jack Kemp; and Grace Nelson, married to my now Senate colleague Bill Nelson, Democrat from Florida. Holly Leachman was the spiritual spark plug who kept it all going for me and became a dear friend. Throughout my time at the White House, Holly faxed me a daily Scripture reading or faith message and came often to visit just to cheer me up or pray with me.

The lunch on February 24, 1993, was held at the Cedars, an estate on the Potomac that serves as headquarters for the National Prayer Breakfast and the prayer groups it has spawned around the world. Doug Coe, the longtime National Prayer Breakfast organizer, is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God and offer the gift of service to others in need. Doug became a source of strength and friendship, and he, too, often sent me notes of support. All of these relationships began at that extraordinary lunch.

Each of my “prayer partners” told me she would pray for me weekly. In addition, they presented me with a handmade book filled with messages, quotes and Scripture that they hoped would sustain me during my time in Washington. Of all the thousands of gifts I received in my eight years in the White House, few were more welcome and needed than these twelve intangible gifts of discernment, peace, compassion, faith, fellowship, vision, forgiveness, grace, wisdom, love, joy and courage. Over the coming months and years, these women faithfully prayed for and with me. I appreciated their concern and their willingness to ignore Washington’s political divide to reach out to someone in need of support.

I often pulled out their little book. Susan Baker visited and wrote me, offering encouragement and empathy about events ranging from the loss of my father to the political storms surrounding Bill’s Presidency.

As the administration neared its one-hundred-day mark at the end of April, it was obvious that we would not meet our self-imposed deadline for a health care package, and it wasn’t because I had spent two weeks in Little Rock. Information about every proposal under consideration to pay for universal health care coverage ended up in the press, agitating members of Congress about strategies before any decisions had been made. We were already on the defensive before we had a plan. I was surprised how readily people leaked information to journalists. Some believed they were influencing events; others seemed to crave the feeling of self-importance, even if they were only quoted as anonymous sources.