William J. Clinton, No. 42
23 June 2023
Hope, AR
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| William Jefferson Clinton |
This was our most insane trip ever. We dragged ourselves out of bed at 4:30 a.m. for a 7:15 a.m. flight to Dallas, then drove three hours east in the scorching heat to Hope, Arkansas, to tour the Birthplace Home of Bill Clinton, only to find it …. closed.
East Texas is a world unto itself: conservative, depressed, hot. Snippet from our drive from Dallas to Hope: We stopped at one of the many Love mega gas stations we saw on the way. Inside the store, Cathy was examining the ingredients of a bag of potato chips when she felt a hand on her shoulder and heard someone say: “Potato chips have three ingredients, potatoes, salt and fat.” This from a middle-aged Texan, a white cowboy hat perched on his grinning head. Strapped to his waist was a holster holding a long-bladed knife with a white handle. The holster was oriented for a quick grab and slash.
We continued through Texarkana into Arkansas. Soon we were in Hope. I had always pictured Hope as tree-y and hilly. It was not. “Downtrodden” is the way Cathy describes it.
It wasn’t hard to find the Clinton Birthplace Home since the town has fewer than 9,000 people. The house is a
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| Closed National Historic Site |
white, two-story bungalow with dark green shutters. On busy South Hervey Street, it is next to the railroad tracks in not a particularly attractive part of town.
As we mentioned, the house was closed for, what a sign said, was “excessive heat & mechanical issues,’ which we interpreted to mean the inside of the house was a furnace.
The National Park Service visitors center on the property was also closed.
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| Peaking in the windows |
Dejected, all we could do was walk around the property, peek in some windows (the white, lace curtains in the front obscured our view of what we assumed were the living and dining rooms), and check out the granite marker in the backyard garden dedicated to Clinton’s mother, Virginia Clinton Kelley.
Two more couples showed up to look at the house. First, was a couple roaming the country in an RV--they had left Atlanta a year ago. Both work remotely. Cathy told them that, she would like to do something like that when we retire. “Why wait?” the woman asked. The second couple was from Cincinnati. The husband said his wife’s “bummed she can’t get her (NPS) stamp.” We chatted with said wife about the Reds and the Bengals.
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| Clinton's boyhood home |
occupied by a family. A big sign as well as a smaller plaque in front of the fenced-in property alert visitors to the home. He lived there between the ages of 4 and 7. The house is occupied and the owners appear not to be big Clinton fans. They have a large poster with a photo of Bill and Hillary that says: “Nepotism Rules Here.”
On our way out of town, we decided to drive through the downtown — full of vacant storefronts and decrepit-looking buildings.
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| Downtown Hope, AR |
Then we saw the former train depot, with a “Bill Clinton exhibits” sign outside the town’s visitor center. And it was open.
Saved!
About two-thirds of the space is devoted to the Clintons, and it is full of photos, campaign memorabilia and knickknacks, from his boyhood in Hope to the presidency. It’s not a big space, and it didn’t detail his accomplishments or failures — or scandals — but it did give us a window into Bill Clinton the boy as well as the importance of Hope in his life.
A plaque hanging on the outside wall memorializes Bill Clinton’s visit to the train depot for its dedication. He
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| Train depot visitor's center |
visited with his chief of staff and childhood friend, also a Hope native, Mack McClarty.
Much of the Clinton information was displayed on large wooden boards hanging from the ceiling on chains. The exhibits feature black and white photos of him growing up, class photos, friends, family, etc. As a youth, he wanted to be a cowboy, and many pictures of Bill as a young boy are of him dressed as one. There are several photos of him in the hospital after he broke his leg jump roping with his cowboy boots on. The town watermelon festival, complete with a seed-spitting contest also was a highlight of his youth, according to the exhibit. The center also has photos from his mother’s funeral.
Also — a framed Inauguration T-shirt highlighting Socks the cat, surrounded by campaign pins. Several life-size cutouts of Bill, including one of him playing the saxophone. More campaign pins and White House Christmas ornaments. And in the women’s bathroom, a wall full of White House Christmas cards.
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| The exhibits |
We learned that Clinton never knew his father, William Blythe, who was killed in a one car accident months before he was born. Blythe was traveling to Missouri to pick up his very pregnant wife from a family visit. His tire blew and the car crashed. In those days before seat belts, Blythe was ejected from the car and apparently, in a state of confusion, crawled into a roadside ditch where he was found drowned.
Clinton’s mother, Virginia and her parents raised Bill alone until she remarried a few years later to Roger Clinton who turned out to be an abusive husband.
Clinton was politically motivated from a young age. There is a famous photo of 17-year-old Clinton, as a delegate to Boys Nation, shaking hands with then President John F. Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. In 30 years, the 47-year-old Clinton would be the next youngest since President Kennedy.
And then there’s Hillary. Always Hillary. Everybody seems to have strong opinions about her, pro and con. Bill met Hillary Rodham while both were Yale law students. Hillary, an Illinois native, was a smart, ambitious go-getter. As valedictorian of her Wellesley graduating class, she berated attending Senator Edward Brooks for his support of the Vietnam War. (Interestingly, in high school, Hillary, who came from a conservative family, was a Goldwater Republican but never voted for him because she was too young. She became more liberal in college.)
Hillary was an activist Arkansas first lady during Clinton’s two terms as governor. She was also an activist First Lady. She famously said, “"You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life. And I tried very, very hard to be as careful as possible, and that's all that I can tell you." (She would later go on to become a senator, secretary of state, and the first woman major party nominee. She was nearly elected as president in 2016, winning the popular vote but losing the electoral vote.)
We were the only visitors, and the woman who was volunteering at the center, after welcoming us, had left and was waiting in her car for us to leave. We asked her if she had ever met Bill Clinton but she had not.
Nowhere in the visitor center is there mention of Clinton’s impeachment. Big surprise—we’ve found over our journey that museums and visitors centers are largely sympathetic to their respective presidents and leave out or minimize the unsavory details.
Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky would have gone unacknowledged except that it was revealed during the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit against Clinton and then picked up by the Whitewater special prosecutor, Ken Starr. Both Lewinsky and Clinton denied the affair under oath. Unfortunately for both, a “friend” of Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, recorded their phone conversations. On August 17, 1998, Clinton admitted to the affair. His lies under oath and possible obstruction of justice led to a vote of impeachment—largely along party lines—on Dec. 19, 1998. He was the first president to be impeached since Andrew Johnson in 1868. After a Senate trial, Clinton was acquitted on Feb. 12, 1999.
Clinton’s successes included a negotiated a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians. The agreement was signed at the White House in September 1993. He signed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act in 1993 that established a five-day waiting period, a national criminal background check and ban of assault weapons for 10 years. He signed the (later) controversial North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. In spite of these early successes, the Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, won the House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years. Republicans now had full power in Congress.
At the end of 1995, the government shut down as Clinton and Congress couldn’t agree on a budget. The blame fell mostly on the Republicans and Clinton won another term.
Clinton had to work closely with Congress to get anything done. Together, they passed a balanced budget and created a budget surplus for the 1998 fiscal year. It happened again in 1999 with a budget surplus of $184M. That has not happened since.
In 1999, U.S. forces as part of NATO began a bombing campaign in Serbia. And in 2000, Clinton signed legislation normalizing trade with China.
The train station visitor center reminded us of the train station in Plains, GA that served as Carter’s presidential campaign headquarters. The town itself is also similar to Plains but even more depressed as we mentioned. Not many stores were open.
We left Hope and drove 1.5 hours west to an AirBnB outside Leesburg in east Texas. Our lodging was a cute two-bedroom log cottage on the shore of Lake Bob Sandlin, a 9,000-acre muddy brown lake.
As avid open water swimmers, we jumped into the hot water and swam for an hour, our safety buoys trailing behind us. Occasionally Tom imagined he felt something nipping at his toes. That night we walked out to the dock and watched in horror as hordes of 1-2 ft spotted gar snapped their needle-sharp teeth at bugs attracted to the light. Gar are a serpent-like prehistoric fish that live in dirty, oxygen-depleted water because they can breathe surface air if needed. Not a friendly bunch. Nor good news for our planned swim the next morning.
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| Into the gar infested water |
That night we found a local waterfront restaurant named Cove. Lots of tattoos, cowboy/baseball hats, and swagger. Two men sitting behind Cathy sported mohawks, beards, deep tans and serious demeanors. Tom said the men looked “like killers.” A duo performed country music outside.
The next morning, we beat back our fears and jumped into the water for another swim. We tried not to think about the ancient and possible new life forms in the primordial organic soup. (Many of the homes along the lake, including the one we rented, have septic systems, which undoubtedly contribute pollutants to the mess.) Luckily, we had no gar encounters.
After swimming, we rushed to Love Field and learned our flight was delayed three hours. Despite our many questions, we were never able get a straight answer from any of the airline staff. We head everything from mechanical problems to weather problems to delay problems at other airports. We couldn’t even learn if our connecting flight had left the ground. No, yes, no. Everyone we asked stared at their computer screens and gave different answers. We could get better information from a Ouija board.
When we finally landed 3 hours late at BWI, the flight attendant apologized for the delay and said, “we’ll make it up to you next time.” But the torture wasn’t over--no gate was open for us at 11 p.m. Later our shuttle driver gave us yet another reason for the delay: a traffic control in the Washington DC area had caught fire at 4 pm!
Directions
Hope is located in western Arkansas on Highway 30, 200 miles from Dallas or 110 miles from Little Rock.
References
Smith, Carter. 2004. Presidents: Every Question Answered. Hylas Publishing. New York, NY.
