Living History by Unknown (the lemonade war series txt) 📗

me about a woman who had been arrested for disturbing the peace by preaching the gospel on the streets of Bentonville; she was scheduled to appear before a judge who intended to send her down to the state mental hospital because nobody knew what else to do with her. The jailer asked me to come as soon as I could because she didn’t think the lady was crazy, just “possessed by the Lord’s spirit.”

When I got to the courthouse, I met the jailer and the inmate, a gentle-looking soul wearing an ankle-length dress and clutching her well-worn Bible. She explained that Jesus had sent her to preach in Bentonville and that, if released, she would go right back out to continue her mission. When I learned that she was from California, I persuaded the judge to buy her a bus ticket home instead of ordering her to be committed to the state hospital, and I convinced her that California needed her more than Arkansas.

Bill had won the primary for Congress and the Democratic runoff in June, with a little help from my father and my brother Tony, who spent a few weeks in May doing campaign grunt work, putting up posters and answering phones. It still amazes me that my diehard Republican father worked for Bill’s election, a testament to how much he had come to love and respect him.

By Labor Day, Bill’s campaign was picking up momentum, and the Republicans began a barrage of personal attacks and dirty tricks. It was my first up-close exposure to the efficacy of lies and manipulation in a campaign.

When President Nixon was in Fayetteville for the 1969 Texas vs. Arkansas football game, a young man climbed into a tree to protest the Vietnam War―and Nixon’s presence on campus. Five years later, Bill’s political opponents claimed that Bill was the guy in the tree. It didn’t matter that Bill was studying in Oxford, England, at the time, four thousand miles away. For years after, I ran into people who believed the charge.

One of Bill’s mailings to voters was not delivered, and the bales of postcards were later found stashed behind a post office. Other incidents of sabotage were reported, but no foul play could be proved. When election night came that November, Bill lost by 6,000

votes out of over 170,000 cast―52 to 48 percent. Long after midnight, as Bill, Virginia, Roger and I were leaving the little house that had served as Bill’s campaign headquarters, the phone rang. I picked it up, sure that it would be some friend or supporter calling to commiserate. Someone shouted into the phone, “I’m so glad that nigger-loving Commie fag Bill Clinton lost,” and then hung up. What could inspire such bile? I thought. It was a question I would ask many times in the years ahead.

At the end of the school year I decided to take a long trip back to Chicago and the East Coast to visit friends and people who had offered me jobs. I still wasn’t sure what to do with my life. On the way to the air port, Bill and I passed a red brick house near the university with a “For Sale” sign out front. I casually mentioned that it was a sweetlooking little house and never gave it a second thought. After a few weeks of traveling and thinking, I decided I wanted to return to my life in Arkansas and to Bill. When Bill picked me up, he asked, “Do you remember that house you liked? Well, I bought it, so now you’d better marry me because I can’t live in it by myself.”

Bill proudly drove up the driveway and ushered me inside. The house had a screenedin porch, a living room with a beamed cathedral ceiling, a fireplace, a big bay window, a good-sized bedroom and bath room and a kitchen that needed a lot of work. Bill had already bought an old wrought-iron bed at a local antiques store and had been to Wal-mart for sheets and towels.

This time I said “yes.”

We were married in the living room on October 11, 1975, by the Reverend Vic Nixon.

Vic, a local Methodist minister, and his wife, Freddie, had worked on Bill’s campaign.

There for the ceremony were my parents and brothers; Virginia and Roger; Johanna Branson; Betsy Johnson Ebeling, now married to our high school classmate Tom; F. H.

Martin, who had served as treasurer of Bill’s 1974 campaign, and his wife, Myrna; Marie Clinton, Bill’s cousin; Dick Atkinson, a friend from Yale Law School, who had joined us on the law school faculty; Bess Osenbaugh and Patty Howe, a close friend who had grown up with Bill in Hot Springs. I wore a lace-and-muslin Victorian dress I had found shopping with my mother the night before. I walked into the room on my father’s arm, and the minister said, “Who will give away this woman?” We all looked at my father expectantly.

But he didn’t let go. Finally Rev. Nixon said, “You can step back now, Mr. Rodham.”

After the ceremony, Ann and Morriss Henry hosted a reception in their big backyard, where a few hundred friends gathered to celebrate with us.

After all that has happened since, I’m often asked why Bill and I have stayed together.

It’s not a question I welcome, but given the public nature of our lives, it’s one I know will be asked again and again. What can I say to explain a love that has persisted for decades and has grown through our shared experiences of parenting a daughter, burying our parents and tending our extended families, a lifetime’s worth of friends, a common faith and an abiding commitment to our country? All I know is that no one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way Bill does. Even after all these years, he is still the most interesting, energizing and fully alive person I have ever met. Bill Clinton and I started a conversation in the spring of 1971, and more