Love him or loathe him, we’re in for four more years of Bill Clinton as Big Bubba.
Whether you voted for Clinton or not, a trip to Arkansas illustrates what makes the twice-elected chief executive so famous (and infamous).
From his boyhood home in Hope to his teenage hangouts in Hot Springs, from his home as a young college professor in Fayetteville to the governor’s mansion in Little Rock–all the main sights can be seen easily in a few days.
And it’s not all rosy — remember the Rose Law Firm, where some claim that Hillary Rodham Clinton took part in some shady dealings? Or Whitewater, the real estate venture the Clintons invested in that has sent some of their friends to jail even as the first couple insist they never did anything unethical or illegal?
Even the state’s leading newspaper tars its home-state hero, publishing a Clinton Scandal Tour that takes you to some spots the president and first lady might rather forget.
So jump in the pickup, turn on the Travis Tritt and take a ride along the highways and byways of “Clinton Country.”
Hope
Bill Clinton popped into the world on Aug. 19, 1946, at the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope. His original name: William Jefferson Blythe III.
“He was just the cutest, sweetest little boy you ever saw. Everyone loved Bill right from the start — they still do,” said Jenny Sue McKee, 74, a family friend who used to baby-sit the drooling future leader of the free world.
The hospital no longer exists, but a marker was erected in 1992 on the site (1001 S. Main St.).
Before Clinton’s climb to fame, the tiny town was best known for its behemoth watermelons, some topping 250 pounds. The Watermelon Festival (“Get a Slice of the Good Life in Hope”) is still held the third weekend of each August.
Clinton’s father, William Blythe, died in an automobile accident before his son was born.
Virginia Cassidy Blythe went off to Louisiana to become a nurse and left Bill behind to be raised for a while by her parents, Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, at 117 Hervey St.
The green and white two-story clapboard house near the railroad tracks is being restored to its early-1950s look. It’s a rare household in a commercial strip. Across the busy four-lane street is the Sonic Drive-In, the Fashion Zone (“Where Fashions Cost Less!”) and the Tobacco Outlet.
“We get a few tourists who want to make sure the house is where President Clinton lived,” said Barbara Glasgow, the manager of Tobacco Outlet. “They park over at the Food Giant, look through the chain link, then take pictures of themselves in front of an empty house. If you ask me, it’s kinda stupid.”
Glasgow said that while Hope’s economy has declined since the 1950s, it retains many small-town charms.
“I have two teenage boys and I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” she said. “This is still a place where everybody knows everybody and they’ll tell your mama if you get out of line.”
Bill’s mother returned to Hope when he was 4, married the local Buick dealer, Roger Clinton (whose last name Bill would take at age 16), and moved to a house on the other side of town at 321 E. 13th. Bill attended kindergarten at Miss Mary Purkins School for Little Folks on East Second Street and 1st grade at Brookwood Public School at 500 S. Spruce St. in Hope.
Hope has turned large chunks of itself over to shrines to the president. In addition to his boyhood homes, the former Missouri Pacific Train Depot (which starred in the campaign film “A Man From Hope”) at South Main and Division Streets has been converted into a city museum that is heavy with Clinton hagiography.
Clinton’s mother, father and maternal grandparents are buried at Rose Hill Cemetery (on Arkansas Highway 29).
Hope is also the hometown of Thomas F. “Mack” McLarty Jr., who served as Clinton’s chief of staff. It’s also the boyhood home of current Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — a Republican and frequent Clinton critic.
Hot Springs
When he was 7 years old, Bill Clinton’s family pulled up stakes and moved to Hot Springs, where Roger Clinton got a job at his brother’s automobile dealership.
During his presidential campaigns, Clinton liked to fashion himself a small-town boy, the “Man From Hope.”
But it was beautiful, rollicking, dicey Hot Springs that shaped him into manhood. He lived in the spa town from 1953 until he went off to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1964.
American Indians first discovered “the Valley of the Vapors” with its 47 thermal springs. By early this century, it was a top destination for ailing aristocrats and robber barons, becoming the nation’s 18th national park in 1921.
Hot Springs was a booze-and-gambling mecca during Prohibition. Chicago gangster Al Capone was a frequent guest, trying to beat the venereal disease that would eventually drive him crazy — or perhaps just more so.
Hot Springs retained a somewhat corrupt reputation well into the 1960s.
It was in Hot Springs that Clinton first got the reputation as a glad-handing “slick Willie,” a natural outgrowth of the kind of city he grew up in, according to two historians.
“A particular amoral freedom suffused the environment for Hot Springs youth,” wrote B.C. Hall and C.T. Wood in their book “The South.” “The kids had more than ample opportunity to become jaded. … Kids from Hot Springs had an innocent cynicism about them that too many have interpreted as cockiness or being `slick.”‘
Hot Springs had long faded as “the nation’s bathtub” by the time Clinton moved there. Most of the eight Gilded Age “Bathhouse Row” spas on Central Avenue had closed their doors in the years after World War II, when penicillin and other drugs had replaced “taking the waters” as a cure for ailments such as syphilis and gout.
Today only the Buckstaff Bathhouse carries on the spa traditions, while the ornate former Fordyce Bathhouse serves as the visitors center. The once-opulent Arlington Hotel now caters to budget travelers, but still exudes an air of calm classiness.
Hot Springs is filled with Clinton sites, starting with the big hand-carved wooden sign trumpeting, “The Boyhood Home of President Clinton” at Hill Wheatley Plaza on Central Avenue as you drive into town.
The first couple’s wax like-nesses stand stiffly at Josephine Tussaud’s Wax Museum, in a building that used to hold Capone’s speak-easy and gambling hall. Nearby are Clinton’s two boyhood homes (1011 Park Ave. and 213 Scully St.), the Park Place Baptist Church where he was baptized (721 Park Ave.), the Polar Bar–now Bailey’s Dairy Treat–where he would have a cheeseburger and Grapette soda (510 Park Ave.), the Malco Movie Theater where Clinton would camp out with buddies in the middle of one of the front rows (817 Central Ave.), and the outlook on West Mountain where local teenagers would go necking.
Clinton’s favorite hangout was the neon-drenched McClard’s Barbeque (505 Albert Pike), where he’d spend hours with friends in a back booth, eating tamales and ribs washed downed with bottle after bottle of Coca-Cola.
“He came here all through school, when he taught at the university and even when he was governor,” said John Thomason, one of the managers. “Nobody paid him much mind until he became president.”
Thomason, who graduated from Hot Springs High School (215 Oak St.) a year behind Clinton, is part of a rump group of Republicans at McClard’s. He even engineered a visit to Clinton’s rib shack by presidential nemesis Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).
“I’m not a big Clinton fan — he took credit for a lot of things in high school that he didn’t have anything to do with and he did the same thing as governor and president,” said Thomason, who sports his salt-and-pepper hair in a long ponytail. “But he was always very popular in Hot Springs, you know, class-president and `most likely to succeed’ kinds of things.”
Linda McClard, another manager, scooted by with a big plate of sauce-slathered ribs.
“Don’t listen to him, we love Bill — John’s just a sore loser. I mean, he liked George Bush!” she said with a giggle.
Fayetteville
After stints at Georgetown, Oxford and Yale Law School, Clinton returned to Arkansas in 1973 to teach law at the University of Arkansas.
Clinton lectured at Waterman Hall, where Hillary Rodham was also an instructor. The couple was married in a house at 930 California Blvd. in 1975. Late-night bull sessions where Clinton polished his political pitch were held at the D-Lux Cafe (300 W. Dickson St.).
The future president launched his political career in 1974 from a storefront at 824 College St., losing his bid to unseat Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt. Two years later, he ran and won the attorney general’s job at the age of 30.
Little Rock
Like Hope and Hot Springs, Little Rock claims to be the president’s hometown.
It’s where Clinton rose to power, first as a boyish attorney general, then winning election as governor in 1978 — at 32, the youngest state chief executive in the United States. He lost his re-election bid in Ronald Reagan’s national GOP landslide of 1980, but regained the job in 1982.
The Statehouse Convention Center, Markham and Main Streets, was the site of Clinton’s inaugural balls as governor; it also was the media center for election night in 1992.
Clinton’s nerve center was the governor’s office in the pretty turn-of-the-century state capital. Republican Mike Huckabee now sits in Clinton’s former chair. He inherited the job as lieutenant governor after Clinton’s Democratic successor, Jim Guy Tucker, was forced from office in April. Tucker had been convicted on fraud charges stemming from the ill-fated Whitewater development.
Despite the 16 years he spent as attorney general and governor, Little Rock had little pull on the heart of Bill Clinton.
“The town was never a place you tried to get away to, but from, and the most famous escape was accomplished by Bill Clinton,” Hall and Wood wrote.
Clinton fans can visit the Governor’s Mansion (18th and Center Streets), with its bronze bust of Clinton in the shady garden near the front gate. There are two former Clinton homes (5419 L St. and 816 Midland St.); the Old State House where Clinton announced his 1992 bid for the White House (it’s a museum with much Clinton memorabilia at 300 W. Markham St.); and his former place of worship, the Immanuel Baptist Church.
But Little Rock is also a treasure trove for Clinton-haters. The Clinton Scandal Tour, originally published by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, winds past 11 spots where incidents Clinton heatedly denies allegedly took place.
There’s the Excelsior Hotel (3 Statehouse Plaza) where Paula Jones alleged Clinton made unwelcome sexual advances. The Riverfront Hilton (2 Riverfront Plaza) where would-be entertainer Connie Hamzy alleged she had a fling with Clinton. The nearby Quapaw Towers (700 E. Ninth St.) was home to alleged Clinton paramour Gennifer Flowers.
The Rose Law Firm (120 E. Fourth St.) is where Hillary Rodham Clinton worked for much of her husband’s tenure in Little Rock, allegedly including putting time in on the infamous Whitewater deal.
One of her partners was Vince Foster, who would later kill himself in Washington, D.C.
The Gazette list includes its former building at 112 W. Third St., which Clinton converted into his headquarters for the 1992 presidential campaign. It’s also where critics claim $4 million in campaign contributions disappeared.
Whitewater
Near the little Ozark Mountains town of Flippin is a waterway that the Clintons likely wish they had never heard of.
On the banks of the White River are the now-infamous 203 acres the then-attorney general, his wife, and their business partners borrowed $203,000 in 1978 to buy and develop as a vacation-home resort.
Its name: Whitewater.
Their partner was James McDougal, a major Clinton campaign contributor and owner of the soon-to-fail Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan. He would eventually be convicted on 18 counts of fraud related to Whitewater and other investments. His wife, Susan, was convicted on four counts.
The murky deal also involves claims of a cover-up of incriminating Whitewater evidence following Foster’s suicide, shady dealings by former Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell, a one-time law partner of Hillary Clinton’s who was sentenced to 21 months in prison for wire fraud and tax evasion.
The first couple still are scrambling to put out political brush fires stemming from the deal, in which they reportedly lost $60,000. Though the Clintons deny any impropriety, a special prosecutor is investigating.
Visitors can enjoy the locale at the nearby White River Recreation Area, a quiet haven of canoeing, trout fishing and hiking along a portion of the 720-mile-long river. Or stay in one of the 105 campsites in nearby Bull Shoals State Park.
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For information on the White River Recreation Area and Bull Shoals State Park, call Arkansas Department of Parks at 501-882-1364.
