For Tornado Victims, Balm From Clinton

There it was, big as the cloudless sky: Air Force One thundering over houses without roofs, cars without windows, trees scattered on the ground like a game of pickup sticks.

And the people of this modest, devastated neighborhood were waiting.

“This is President Clinton’s community,” declared the Rev. Hezekiah D. Stewart Jr., watching as the presidential plane headed toward a landing at Little Rock, Ark. He added: “It’s kind of like a homeboy coming home with the power and the ability to heal broken hearts and wounds.”

In one sense, the president’s visit Tuesday to Arkansas in the wake of a batch of calamitous tornadoes was a routine appearance by a chief executive dispensing emergency relief and official empathy to disaster victims. Clinton surveyed hard-hit counties by helicopter, met with residents and declared major disaster areas in Ohio and Kentucky.

Yet there was a poignant subplot provided by the residents of College Station, hard-working people who retain vivid memories of Clinton as an upwardly mobile, junior politician. Once upon a time, Clinton courted the members of this largely African American community for support, popping up in their churches “two or three times,” posing for pictures, scrambling after their votes, helping deliver a community center after he was governor.

But Tuesday, it was the residents, some carrying time-worn photographs of a dark-haired Clinton, who were counting on the familiar politician to come to their rescue. “He knows more people down here than I know, and I’ve been living here all my life,” said Charles Hinton, 37, who bags mail inside a local printing plant. “Now it’s our turn to ask for a favor.”

The tornadoes that hit this community of about 3,000 killed five people, wrecked 34 homes and damaged at least 40 others. More striking than sheer numbers, however, were the macabre images of destruction: cars atop mountains of debris, fences flattened by a bulldozer wind, ragged patches of insulation turned ghostlike ornaments on fallen hackberry and white oak trees. One man rocketed 30 feet in the air, his body discovered in a fetal position after it landed.

Overall, tornadoes that ravaged several states sliced a 260-mile wide path of disaster through Arkansas, leaving more than 20 dead.

As the huge repair job commenced Tuesday under a warm, windless sky, residents of College Station milled about, happy to share memories of a young, up-and-coming politician named Bill Clinton. “He got us those lights at the ball field over there,” recalled Sandra Adams, 38, a dietitian at a nursing home where a wall fell on a patient during the storms.

Once, she met Chelsea Clinton at the Pizza Hut “up on 9th and the freeway,” accompanied by her governor-dad. Just across the street, the community center Clinton had dedicated was part of the toll.

Clinton initially toured Arkadelphia, Ark., and he told reporters Tuesday that the town brought back vivid memories of childhood visits to his grandparents in Hope.

“I’d always stop in Arkadelphia and get a Coca Cola and walk around the square,” he recalled of his youthful travels on a Trailways bus from his home town of Hot Springs.

“See the old courthouse,” he said at another point. “The clock was blown right out of the tower.”

The town of some 10,000 and its surrounding county, which are southwest of Little Rock, suffered seven deaths and the destruction of 375 homes, according to Mayor Mike Kolb.

In his public remarks, Clinton recalled that as president, he had seen many disasters, including fires, floods and earthquakes in California. “But nothing has quite affected me the way this has today, and I think it’s because I’ve been coming to Arkadelphia for more than 40 years,” he said.

“I wish there were more I could say and do.”

It was soon after this appearance that the president traveled to College Station and the community that awaited him, some eager to recall tales of the violent storm.

“We’ve got to build the houses back,” Clinton told a group of men who had gathered around an upturned tree and watched as the president climbed over a fallen utility poll to approach them.

Barbara Smith, 37, who works at a local steel plant, recalled that Clinton used to appear in the area when new factories opened up, factories that employ many of those whose homes were damaged: “I’ve been looking for him,” she said of the president. “I was sure he would come here.”