Living History (14 page)

Hubbell looked like a good of boy, but he was a creative litigator, and I loved to listen to him talk about arcane Arkansas law. His memory was phenomenal. He also had a tricky back that would sometimes go out on him. Once Webb and I stayed at the office all night working on a brief that was due the next day. Webb lay on the floor on his hurting back spouting citations of cases back to the nineteenth century; my job was to run around the law library hunting them down.

In the first jury trial I handled on my own, I defended a canning company against a plaintiff who found the rear end of a rat in the can of pork and beans he opened for dinner one night. He didn’t actually eat it but claimed that the mere sight was so disgusting that he couldn’t stop spitting, which in turn interfered with his ability to kiss his fiancée. He sat through the trial spitting into a handkerchief and looking miserable. There was no doubt that something had gone wrong in the processing plant, but the company refused to pay the plaintiff since it argued that he hadn’t really been damaged; and besides, the rodent parts which had been sterilized might be considered edible in certain parts of the world. Although I was nervous in front of the jury, I warmed to the task of convincing them that my client was in the right and was relieved when they awarded the plaintiff only nominal damages. For years after, Bill used to kid me about the “rat’s ass” case and mimic the plaintiff’s claim he could no longer kiss his fiancée because he was so busy spitting.

I also continued my work in child advocacy through my law practice. Beryl Anthony, an attorney in El Dorado, asked me to help him represent a couple who wanted to adopt the foster child who had lived with them for two and a half years. The Arkansas Department of Human Services refused, citing a policy against permitting foster parents to adopt. I’d encountered the same policy in Connecticut when I was working as a law student at legal services. Beryl, married to Pence’s older sister, Sheila, had heard from Pince about my interest in such issues. I jumped at the chance to work on the case. Our clients, a local stockbroker and his wife, had the means to fund an effective challenge to the policy.

The Arkansas Department of Human Services had its own lawyers, so I didn’t have to worry about going up against the Attorney General.

Beryl and I presented expert testimony about the stages of a child’s development and the degree to which a child’s emotional wellbeing depends on the presence of a consistent caregiver in early life. We persuaded the judge that the contract the foster parents had signed―agreeing not to adopt―should not be enforceable if its terms were contrary to the child’s best interests. We won the case but our victory didn’t change the state’s formal policy about foster children’s placement because the state didn’t appeal the decision.

Thankfully our victory did serve as a precedent that the state eventually adopted. Beryl was elected to Congress in 1978, where he served for fourteen years, and Sheila Foster Anthony became a lawyer herself.

My experience on this case and others convinced me that Arkansas needed a statewide organization devoted to advocating for children’s rights and interests. I was not alone in thinking that. Dr. Bettye Cald well, an internationally recognized professor of child development at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, knew of my work and asked me to form one with her and other Arkansans concerned about the status of children in the state. We founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, which spearheaded reforms in the child welfare system and continues to advocate for children today.

While I was working on lawsuits at Rose and taking on child advocacy cases pro bono, I was also learning about the expectations and unspoken mores of life in the South.

Wives of elected officials were constantly scrutinized. In 1974 Barbara Pryor, wife of the Governor-elect, David Pryor, had drawn withering criticism for her newly permed short hairdo. I liked Barbara and thought the public attention to her hair was ridiculous. (Little did I know.) I assumed that as a busy mother of three sons she was looking for an easy style. In a show of solidarity, I decided to subject my stubbornly straight hair to a tight permanent that would, I thought, replicate Barbara’s. I had to have the permanent applied twice in order to get the desired effect. When I showed up with my frizzed hair, Bill just shook his head, wondering why I had cut off and “messed up” my long hair.

One of the reasons Vince and Webb became such good friends is that they accepted me for who I was, often poking fun at my intensity or explaining patiently why some idea of mine would never fly. We made it a habit to escape from the office for regular lunches, often going to an Italian restaurant called the Villa. It was a checkered-cloth-and-candle—

in-the-Chianti-bottle sort of place near the university, where we could avoid the usual business crowds. It was fun to exchange war stories about our battles in the Arkansas court system or just to talk about our families. Of course, this too raised some eyebrows.

In Little Rock at that time, women did not usually have meals with men who were not their husbands.

While being a politician’s wife as well as a trial lawyer occasionally got people talking when I stepped out in public, I was not usually recognized. Once another attorney and I chartered a small plane to fly to Harrison, Arkansas, for a court appearance, only to land at the airstrip and find there were no taxis. I walked over to a group of men standing around the hangar. “Is anybody driving into Harrison?” I asked. “We need to go to the courthouse.”

Without turning around, one man offered, “I am. I’ll take you.”

The man drove an old junker stuffed with tools, so we all crammed into the front seat and headed for Harrison. We barreled along with the radio blaring―until the news came on and the announcer said, “Today, Attorney General Bill Clinton said that he would be investigating judge So-and-so for misbehavior on the bench…” All of a sudden our driver shouted, “Bill Clinton! You know that son of a bitch Bill Clinton?”

I braced myself and said, “Yeah, I do know him. In fact, I’m married to him.”

That got the man’s attention, and he turned to look at me for the first time. “You’re married to Bill Clinton? Well, he’s my favorite son of a bitch, and I’m his pilot!”

This was when I noticed that our Samaritan had a black disk over one eye. He was called One-Eyed Jay, and sure enough, had been flying Bill in little airplanes all over.

Now I just hoped old One-Eyed Jay’s driving was as good as his flying, and I was grateful when he delivered us to the courthouse safe and sound, if a bit rumpled.

The years 1978 through 1980 were among the most difficult, exhilarating, glorious and heartbreaking in my life. After so many years of talking about the ways Bill could improve conditions in Arkansas, he finally had a chance to act when he was elected Governor in 1978. Bill started his two-year term with the energy of a racehorse exploding from the gate. He had made dozens of campaign promises, and he started fulfilling them in his first days in office. Before long he had delivered a thick, detailed budget book to every legislator and presented sweeping initiatives to create a new economic development department, reform rural health care, overhaul the state’s inadequate education system and fix the state highways. Since new revenue would be needed to support these measures, particularly road improvement, taxes had to be raised. Bill and his advisers thought the people would accept an increase in car tag fees for the promise of better highways. But that proved to be woefully wrong.

In 1979 I was made a partner at the Rose Law Firm, and I devoted as much energy as possible to my job. Often I hosted social events at the Governor’s Mansion or presided over meetings of the Rural Health Advisory Committee, which Bill had asked me to chair as part of his effort to improve access to quality health care in rural Arkansas. I continued my involvement with Marian Wright Edelman and the Children’s Defense Fund and commuted to Washington, D.C., every few months to chair board meetings. And based on my experience and my work on his campaign, President Carter had appointed me to the board of the Legal Services Corporation, a position for which I had to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The Corporation was the nonprofit federal program created by Congress and President Nixon that funded legal assistance for the poor. I served with Mickey Kantor, a former legal services lawyer who had represented migrant workers in Florida.

He later became a successful lawyer in Los Angeles and served as Chairman of Bill’s 1992 presidential campaign.

As if that weren’t enough, Bill and I were also trying to have a baby. We both love children, and anyone with kids knows there is never a “convenient” time to start a family.

Bill’s first term as Governor seemed as inconvenient a time as any. We weren’t having any luck until we decided to take a vacation in Bermuda, proving once again the importance of regular time off.

I persuaded Bill to attend Lamaze classes with me, a new enough phenomenon that it prompted many people to wonder why their Governor was planning to deliver our baby.

When I was about seven months’ pregnant, I was in court, trying a lawsuit with Gaston Williamson and chatting with the judge when I mentioned that Bill and I were attending “birthing” classes every Saturday morning.

“What?” the judge exploded. “I’ve always supported your husband, but I don’t believe a husband has any business being there when the baby is born!” And he wasn’t kidding.

Around this same time, in January 1980, the Arkansas Children’s Hospital was planning to build a big expansion and needed a good bond rating. Dr. Betty Lowe, the hospital’s Medical Director and later Chelsea’s pediatrician, asked if I would go with a group of trustees and doctors to help make the case before the rating agencies in New York City. I had gotten so big that I made some people nervous, but I went, and for years Betty told people that the rating agencies agreed with their plans as a way of getting a very pregnant Governor’s wife out of their offices before she delivered.

As my March due date drew near, my doctor said I couldn’t travel, which meant that I missed the annual White House dinner for the Governors. Bill got back to Little Rock on Wednesday, February 27, in time for my water to break. That threw him and the state troopers into a panic. Bill ran around with the Lamaze list of what to take to the hospital.

It recommended bringing a small plastic bag filled with ice, to suck on during labor. As I hobbled to the car, I saw a state trooper loading a thirty-nine-gallon black garbage bag filled with ice into the trunk.

After we arrived at the hospital, it became clear that I would have to have a cesarean, not something we had anticipated. Bill requested that the hospital permit him to accompany me into the operating room, which was unprecedented. He told the administrators that he had gone with his mother to see operations and knew he’d be fine. That he was the Governor certainly helped convince Baptist Hospital to let him in. Soon thereafter the policy was changed to permit fathers in the delivery room during cesarean operations.

Our daughter’s birth was the most miraculous and awe-inspiring event in my life.

Chelsea Victoria Clinton arrived three weeks early on February 27, 1980, at 11:24 P.M., to the great joy of Bill and our families. While I was recovering, Bill took Chelsea in his arms for father-daughter “bonding” laps around the hospital. He would sing to her, rock her, show her off and generally suggest that he had invented fatherhood.

Chelsea has heard us tell stories about her childhood many times: She knows she was named after Judy Collins’s version of Joni Mitchell’s song “Chelsea Morning,” which her father and I heard as we strolled around Chelsea in London, during the wonderful vacation we took over Christmas in 1978. Bill said, “If we ever have a daughter, we should name her Chelsea.” And he started singing along.

Chelsea knows how mystified I was by her arrival and how inconsolable she could be when she cried, no matter how much I rocked her. She knows the words I said to her in my effort to calm us both: “Chelsea, this is new for both of us. I’ve never been a mother before, and you’ve never been a baby. We’re just going to have to help each other do the best we can.”

Early on the morning after Chelsea’s birth, my law partner Joe Giroir called and asked me if I wanted a ride to work. He was kidding, of course, but up until then, I had not succeeded in persuading my partners to formally adopt a parental leave plan. In fact, as I grew bigger and bigger, they just averted their eyes and talked about anything else besides my plans for when the baby came. Once Chelsea arrived, however, they told me to take whatever time I needed.

I was able to take four months off from fulltime work to stay home with our new daughter, though with less income. As a partner, I continued to receive a base salary, but my income depended on the fees I generated, which naturally decreased during the time I wasn’t working. I never forgot how much more fortunate I was than many women to be given this time with my child. Bill and I both recognized the need for parental leave, preferably paid. We emerged from our experience committed to ensuring that all parents have the option to stay home with their newborn children and to have reliable child care when they return to work. That’d why I was so thrilled when the first bill he signed as President was the Family and Medical Leave Act.

We were living in the Governor’s Mansion, which had a built-in support system to help with Chelsea. Eliza Ashley, the invaluable cook who had worked in the mansion for decades, loved having a child in the house. Carolyn Huber, whom we had coaxed away from the Rose Law Firm to manage the mansion during Bill’s first term, was like a member of the family. Chelsea came to think of her as a surrogate aunt, and her help was priceless. But I never took any of our blessings for granted. As soon as Bill and I decided to start a family, I had begun to plan for a more stable financial future.

Money means almost nothing to Bill Clinton. He is not opposed to making money or owning property; it has simply never been a priority. He’s happy when he has enough to buy books, watch movies, go out to dinner and travel. Which is just as well, because as Governor of Arkansas he never made more than $35,000 a year, before taxes. That was a good income in Arkansas, and we lived in the Governor’s Mansion and had an official expense account that covered meals, which made it a better one. But I worried that because politics is an inherently unstable profession, we needed to build up a nest egg.