I DO miss Bill Clinton's Mom.

[elehhhhna]

.

[journalist3072]

1. Virginia Kelly was a wonderful woman, wasn't she? Such personality. eom

[terisan]

2. Interesting character, like Jimmy Carter's mother-different types but no putting on airs

[Ilsa]

3. I remember that as the only time I ever sent a card to the WH, to a president.

I even got a nice acknowledgement back.

What a wonderful lady!

[Tatiana]

4. I met her once - very down-to-earth lady.

Pulled no punches, didn't hesitate to speak her mind, and had a really nice sense of humor.

It's very easy to see where Bill got some of his charm from.

[AlCzervik]

5. she seemed like a really nice person, like she'd really been through the shit

but came out of it, a surviver and a gracious one.

[CatWoman]

6. remember after sElection 2000

and the GOP harpies went overseas and bad mouthed her to the press?

http://www.slate.com/id/1008074/

[AlCzervik]

8. Barbara Olson just had no class at all, and Lloyd, what ever happened to him?

[Captain Hilts]

7. Had just the right touch of Honky Tonk to her. Jack Germond went to Pimlico w/her. nt

[Binka]

10. Any Lady That Loves The Ponies Is A Friend Of Mine!

I miss her too.

[Tatiana]

9. The Woman Who Shaped the President

<snip>

There was a symbiotic relationship between mother and son during Clinton's long rise to fame. He was motivated to please her and she would let nothing get in his way. On the day he had his final interview for a prestigious Rhodes scholarship, she refused to take calls from doctors seeking her services as a nurse anesthesiologist. "I had to be near the phone when Bill called," she said later.

In the moments after he had been selected, Clinton told an interviewer that he was proud to win such an honor for his mother. When Clinton traveled through Europe during his two years as a Rhodes scholar, Virginia, from her home back in Hot Springs, sent notes to his hosts in various foreign cities, thanking them, as she wrote in one note, for "your hospitality to one that is so dear to me."

In many ways Clinton centered his political philosophy on the lessons of his mother's life. His oft-stated belief in future preference, the idea that one generation should sacrifice for the betterment of the next, was articulated by one of his college professors but had its roots in the sacrifices his mother had made for him. She was the daughter of the town iceman in Hope, a man so poor and sensitive that he cried one morning when he did not have enough money to buy her an Easter dress. She studied nursing and worked long hours at her job to pay for her son's education at Georgetown, Oxford and Yale. She ignored the slights of small-town aristocrats who disparaged her colorful ways and the dreams she had for her son. Her life, said one of Clinton's friends, was one warm embrace.

(more...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/kelley010794.htm