Thinking it fitting that I add a dollop more presidentiality to my journey on top of the Iowa caucuses and LBJ Library, I was able to rationalize the stop. I'm glad I did. Hope is a rather vacant, inappropriately-named town, but I guess presidents can come from humble beginnings. A tall, lonely white house at 117 S. Hervey Street is the first that Bill Clinton ever lived in. I was the only visitor at the National Historic Site early that afternoon and got a personal tour of the whole house. The park ranger told me the story of Bill Clinton's upbringing, and I realized I didn't know it. I do now.
Bill Clinton was born Billy Blythe to Virginia Dell Cassidy three months after his father, William Jefferson Bythe, died in an auto accident. Virginia left him with his grandparents at this house in Hope while she studied nursing in New Orleans. She would later marry Roger Clinton, a car dealer who lived in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Bill would take Clinton as a last name when he was fifteen. The park ranger told me Bill did it because he had a younger brother and thought brothers should have the same last name.
Although none of the furnishings in the house were actual, they were historically from the same era as when little Billy lived there right down to the Hopalong Cassidy blanket on the future president's bed. The only artifact at the house Clinton actually owned once is a book a family member had preserved. It doesn't feel that ancient, but it's still history.
After touring the house, I walked through the small museum nearby. Two Clinton quotes stood out:
All my life, I've been interested in other people's stories. I've wanted to know them, understand them, feel them. When I grew up and got into politics, I always felt the main point of my work was to give people a chance to have better stories.
and
I learned a lot from the stories my uncles, aunts, and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good...Perhaps most important, I learned that everyone has a story...
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