Bill Clinton

ill Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe, III, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas.[1][2] His father, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., was a traveling salesman who died in an automobile accident three months before Bill was born.[3] His mother, Virginia Dell Cassidy (1923–1994), traveled to New Orleans to study nursing soon after he was born. She left Bill in Hope with grandparentsEldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small grocery store.[2] At a time when the Southern United States was segregated racially, Bill's grandparents sold goods on credit to people of all races.[2] In 1950, Bill's mother returned from nursing school and married Roger Clinton, Sr., who owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas with his brother.[2] The family moved to Hot Springsin 1950.


Bill Clinton boyhood home in Hope, Arkansas
Although he assumed use of his stepfather's surname, it was not until Billy (as he was known then) turned fifteen[4] that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather.[2] Clinton says he remembers his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who regularly abused his mother and half-brother, Roger Clinton,Jr., to the point where he intervened multiple times with the threat of violence to protect them.[2][5]
In Hot Springs, Bill attended St. John's Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and Hot Springs High School – where he was an active student leader, avid reader, and musician.[2] He was in the chorus and played the tenor saxophone, winning first chair in the state band's saxophonesection. He briefly considered dedicating his life to music, but as he noted in his autobiography My Life:
"Sometime in my sixteenth year, I decided I wanted to be in public life as an elected official. I loved music and thought I could be very good, but I knew I would never be John Coltrane or Stan Getz. I was interested in medicine and thought I could be a fine doctor, but I knew I would neverbe Michael DeBakey. But I knew I could be great in public service."[2]
Clinton has named two influential moments in his life that contributed to his decision to become a public figure, both occurring in 1963. One was his visit as a Boys Nation senator to the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy.[2][5] The other was listening to Martin Luther King's 1963 I Have a Dream speech, whichimpressed him enough that he later memorized it.[6]
College and law school years



Clinton ran for President of the Student Council while attending the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
With the aid of scholarships, Clinton attended the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., receiving a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service(B.S.) degree in 1968. He spent the summer of 1967, the summer before his senior year, interning for Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright.[2] While in college, he became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Clinton was also a member of the Order of DeMolay, a youth group affiliated with Freemasonry, but he never became a Freemason.[7] He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psihonorary band fraternity.[8]
Upon graduation, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, though because he had switched programs and had left early for Yale University, he did not receive a degree there.[5][9] He developed an interest in rugby union, playing at Oxford[10] and later for the Little Rock Rugby club in Arkansas. While atOxford he also participated in Vietnam War protests and organized an October 1969 Moratorium event.[2]
Clinton's political opponents charge that to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War during his college years, he used the political influence of a U.S. Senator, who employed him as an aide.[11] Col. Eugene Holmes, an Army officer who was involved in Clinton's case, issued a notarized...