Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 18, 1993 TAG: 9301180110
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PHYLLIS W. JORDAN LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SMALL TOWNS GIVE CLINTON LAST SEND-OFF
The signs said it all: "Bubbas for Bill." "Virginia is for Clinton Lovers." "Stop Here!"And finally, the Virginia Department of Transportation's contribution: "White House: 23 Miles."
President-elect Bill Clinton was on the road to the White House on Sunday, and that road took him straight through Virginia. To small towns where American Legion color guards stood at attention for the new president. To roadsides where people brought their children and their dogs to catch a glimpse of a red-and-white bus with the license plate: "Hope 1."
The caravan of buses left for Washington, running red lights, speeding through every intersection as the Virginia State Police blocked all other traffic.
The presidential party was, of course, more than one bus. There were two buses for family and friends, one for VIPs, and eight for the media. And that doesn't count the two black Silverados, their windows tinted black, carrying Secret Service agents. Or the truck that linked broadcast journalists to satellites. Or the police escort.
These were no ordinary buses wending their way to Washington. A glimpse inside the VIP bus showed custom-fit, leather-like chairs, a refrigerator full of Diet Coke and a giant basket of apples, pears, bananas and kumquats.
In one bus, Gov. Douglas Wilder and Sen. Charles Robb, who've had their disagreements, chatted amiably, a passenger reported. They sat together at Monticello.
Wilder had missed Clinton's arrival in Charlottesville on Saturday night, raising speculation that he was avoiding Robb, who stood with Clinton on the platform at the Charlottesville airport.
Wilder dismissed that suggestion: "I had about three or four previous commitments in Richmond. It was virtually impossible to be there."
The governor escorted the Clintons into Culpeper Baptist Church on Sunday, and appeared with them in Warrenton.
As the caravan moved up U.S. 29 to Interstate 66, traffic stacked up at crossroads and exits. Many drivers simply stopped along the road and waved to the buses as they passed. They gathered at rest stops and on median strips. They crowded onto overpasses.
Someone waved a sign shaped like a saxophone. Another dressed like Socks the cat, the Clintons' pet. A man outside Culpeper actually ignored the president-elect and declared: "Welcome Tom Brokaw."
Brokaw, the NBC anchorman, interviewed Clinton during the bus ride from Monticello to Culpeper. His cameraman came back to the media bus with his media credentials autographed by Bill and Hillary Clinton.
But the real action on the bus trip started when the wheels stopped rolling. The Clintons, along with Al and Tipper Gore, dived into the crowds, shaking hands, thanking voters, listening to confidences.
Judith Rutherford came all the way from Norfolk to see Clinton in Culpeper. She got a handshake from him, and her 9-year-old daughter, Lindsay, got a hug.
"Aren't they a nice-looking couple?" Rutherford gushed. "And he was such a nice person."
Just down the street, Pam Oliver of Boston, Va., wept after urging Clinton to support fetal-tissue research. "I voted for you because my mother's dying of Parkinson's disease," she told him. "You're my last hope."
Barely 50 feet away, abortion foes waved signs proclaiming "Mr. Clinton: Don't Mock God!" and condemning fetal-tissue research.
The people of Warrenton and neighboring towns packed the narrow streets of the city, hoping the caravan had enough time to stop. It did, in Warrenton and at a gas station in Gainesville.
Clinton, in his shirt sleeves, addressed the hundreds of people gathered there from the steps of his bus. It was people like them, he said, who won the election for him.
"We'll do our best never to forget who put us in the White House," he said, "people like you along the roads of America."