Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post
Newsgroups: americast.wpost
From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com
Organization: American Cybercasting
Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com
Subject: At Home, at Ease, at Last; Clintons Share With Old Friends the Realization of
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 05:01:45 EST
Message-ID: <49.1992Nov5.050145@AmeriCast.com>

At Home, at Ease, at Last; Clintons Share With Old Friends the
Realization of a Long Quest<By David Maraniss=Washington Post
Staff Writer=

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Nov. 4 - When Bill and Hillary Clinton arrived
for a celebratory breakfast this morning at the home of old
friend Carolyn Staley, Hillary whispered to her host that
Clinton's voice was shot again and that it would be best if the
30 close friends there did most of the talking and let Clinton
sit back and relax.

That plan lasted less than a minute. For the nation's seemingly
indefatigable new 46-year-old leader, there was no morning after
- it was just a continuation of the night before, and the months
and years before, in a life in a sense that has been one long
campaign of making new friends and keeping old ones.

Dressed in blue jeans and a brown suede jacket, Clinton stood for
an hour in Staley's dining room, signing mementos and talking
nonstop after only three hours of rest. He laughed at frayed pic-
tures of his awkward days as a high school thespian, chatted
about health policy with one childhood friend and the future of
aircraft carriers with another, and asked the husband of a col-
lege girlfriend to present him with a list of what he saw as the
nation's business priorities.

His easy garrulousness put in sharp relief his first official
public appearance, later in the day, when a suited and formal
Clinton read a terse statement to the nation and the world.

This morning, Clinton confessed to old friends that he felt
drained by the nonstop frenzy of the final 48 hours of his long
presidential campaign and could use a short vacation, but is not
sure he will take one. "My whole body aches, every bone in my
body," Clinton told his college roommate, Tom Campbell, an air-
line pilot from California.

The mood at the private breakfast at the home of Staley, who grew
up next door to the president-elect in Hot Springs and sang the
national anthem before his victory speech last night, was
described as almost eerily serene; perhaps the only pocket of
calm in a provincial capital bulging with hundreds of low-level
campaign workers anxious about their futures - will they make the
White House cut? - and a larger number of journalists wondering
where the Clinton story will take them next.

David Leopoulos, Clinton's oldest childhood friend, from Park
Avenue in Hot Springs, proposed a toast in the Staley's kitchen,
describing the Clintons as the "thread of friendship and emotion
that runs through all our lives." To one side of Clinton stood
Campbell and the other Georgetown University roommates, Christo-
pher Ashby, Thomas Campbell and Jim Moore, along with another
college friend, Denise Dangremond. To the other side were six
friends from Hot Springs.

Campbell, whose political alliance with Clinton goes back to 1966
when he hung "This is Clinton Country" tags on dormitory doork-
nobs at Georgetown during a college election, said he had been
anticipating this climactic day for so long he was not awestruck
when it finally came. Clinton's becoming president, he said, was
no different than Michael Jordan's winning an NBA championship.

"This is a guy who goes to the gym and practices his dribble for
an hour and then his shots for another hour and keeps at it long
after everyone else has left. He's like a professional basketball
player, that's the best analogy I can give, except his game is
politics, in the best sense of the word. And so he is here and he
is president-elect and none of us who have watched how hard he
practiced are the least bit surprised by it."

Dangremond said she felt "an overwhelming sense of peacefulness"
when Clinton walked up the steps of the Staley house this morn-
ing. "It was a feeling that here was someone who hadn't gotten
away with anything, who hadn't pulled anything off," she said. "I
just had this feeling that this was supposed to happen."

No one at the breakfast called Clinton "Mr. President" or "Mr.
President-elect." He was "Bill," and told his friends he wanted
them to keep calling him Bill after the inauguration in January.
When they hugged last night after the victory speech in front of
the Old State House, Staley told Clinton "I hate to lose you."
Clinton did not respond then, but he told her this morning noth-
ing should change when he gets to Washington.  Staley and many of
the other friends there this morning said they had not made hotel
reservations for the inauguration because Clinton was supersti-
tious and did not want them to until he had won.

But that did not keep them from studying the new life the Clin-
tons would lead. One high school friend told Hillary that she had
just read a book about the White House and described to her every
room, from the sleeping quarters to the bowling alley. While
there have been jokes in recent months about Hillary already
measuring the White House drapes, she seemed genuinely unaware of
her prospective new house's floor plans.

Hovering at Clinton's shoulder most of the morning was Campell's
20-year-old son, also named Tom, a college junior and ROTC member
in San Diego who plans to join the Marine Corps, following in the
footsteps of his father, who was a Marine pilot during the Viet-
nam War. Young Campbell told Clinton that most of his friends
voted for President Bush and were afraid the Marine Corps would
be decimated by defense cutbacks during a Clinton adminstration.

Clinton told him that he had been talking to  retired Adm.  Wil-
liam J. Crowe Jr., a former chairman of the joint chiefs of
staff, about that very subject a few weeks ago and concluded that
"one of the things we need is a strong Marine Corps."

As Clinton was leaving, he sought out the young Campbell, shook
his hand, and said, "I'm proud of you."

"I got chills from that," Campbell said.

Throughout this city and the state, the people touched by
Clinton's life and political rise dealt in different ways with
the emotions of his ultimate triumph. Betsey Wright, his former
chief of staff, said she stayed home alone last night and cried
watching the returns on television, "thinking about 20 years"
since their days in the 1972 George McGovern campaign in Texas.

Dee Dee Myers, his press secretary this year, came to work at the
national headquarters in the old Arkansas Gazette building this
morning worried about whatto say to the 40 members of her press
staff who are concerned about whether they will be kept on for
the transition and perhaps the move to Washington. She said
everyone would remain on the payroll until Friday to help respond
to such burning questions as the first one she received this
morning: When's the next bus trip?

"Don't know," was the answer.

In Clinton's hometown of Hot Springs, where thousands celebrated
their favorite son's election at the Majestic Hotel, no one was
more excited than 80-year-old Edith Irons, a high school teacher
and counselor of Clinton.  "We used to say Bill was destined for
greatness, but in my heart, I must confess, I never, ever thought
I would really have a student who would grow up to be president
of the United States," she said. "Why can you not, why, when
things are so poignant and so deep, why can't you then find the
words - words that in other occasions just come so easy? Today I
cannot find the words."<02:41 11-05C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor-
poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)