Clinton Returns to a Place Called Hope

One month to the day after he was acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial, William Jefferson Clinton returned to a place called Hope to dedicate his birthplace as a historical site.

A cold wind and persistent rain marred the outdoor ceremony in the small Arkansas town that candidate Clinton said he still believed in in 1992, and where the president buried his mother, Virginia Kelly, in 1994.

But the weather didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the president, who reminisced about the nearby sawmill where his grandfather worked and told how he broke his leg in Ms. Perkins’ elementary school class by trying to jump rope in cowboy boots.

“So many accents of Hope linger in my mind and my heart,” Clinton told more than 200 well-wishers who braved the elements to share a sentimental moment with him.

Joe Purvis, a boyhood chum and moving force behind the restoration of the home that was owned by Clinton’s grandparents, choked back tears as he introduced “my friend, the president of the United States.”

Clinton credited his small-town upbringing with instilling in him the values that drove him to public service and the presidency, a lesson he wanted to impart to a throng of schoolchildren who greeted him at the airport.

“A lot of what I learned that was good, that I took with me for the rest of my life, I learned back then,” he said. “It doesn’t matter were you came from in life, it matters what you did with your life.”

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton remained in Washington.

While Clinton has employed subtle symbols as he seeks to move beyond the impeachment drama, the White House cast this visit as more of a sentimental journey.

A week after Clinton won acquittal on February 12 he returned to New Hampshire, whose primary voters gave his campaign a new lease on life in 1992 when he was dogged by charges of infidelity and avoiding the draft.

Throughout that campaign, Clinton reminded voters of his small-town roots and promised a better way for America. “I still believe in a place called Hope,” was one of his most memorable phrases.

The house on South Hervey Street where he was born 52 years ago has been open to tourists since June 1997, and visitors have come from all 50 states and 43 countries.

When it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, the official notice identified the property with “Clinton’s humble beginnings,” his “inner strength” and the “dedication to purpose that has sustained him throughout his distinguished political career.”

Clinton also was raising money for Democrats in Texarkana, Texas, and Little Rock, Ark., during his visit. Weary from his four-day tour through Central America, which ended on Thursday, Clinton decided today to return to Washington late Saturday rather than linger with friends on Sunday.

But even though Clinton left Hope when he was 5 and spent much of his boyhood in Hot Springs, Ark., longtime Arkansas friend Skip Rutherford said the dedication ceremony would make it a “very special” homecoming.

“Hope is particularly significant in his life, because of his roots there and it is the place where his mother is buried,” Rutherford said. “Politics is very personal here. The vast majority of people that President Clinton will see on his visits to Hope, Texarkana and Little Rock will be people that he knows both personally and professionally. The large majority he’ll be able to call by their first name.”

That will include Mack MacLarty, a Hope native who served as a top presidential advisor and is returning to welcome Clinton. An absence will be felt too: Hope was the home of Vincent Foster, the White House lawyer who committed suicide.

The site includes a garden dedicated to Clinton’s mother and is designed to evoke a Southern neighborhood in the 1940s. Visitors first pass through a neighboring dwelling, as if they’re stepping off the porch to visit the Clinton home, a two-and-a-half-story American Foursquare next to the railroad tracks and near a commercial strip.

State funds to help convert the site into a museum hit a snag earlier this week when lawmakers rejected a $500,000 spending request. But state officials attributed that to a procedural misstep and questions about the source of the money and said it didn’t represent opposition to Clinton.