Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 7, 1994 TAG: 9401070113
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GARY BLONSTON KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"My mom's going to be fine," Clinton said. "She's tough as a boot."
For 70 years she was - a bold, exuberant woman who weathered family tragedy, single motherhood, spouse abuse and marital breakup to become both role model for a president and living reminder of Bill Clinton's down-to-earth origins.
In a call from his stepfather sometime before 2:30 a.m. Thursday, Clinton learned that his mother had died in her sleep in Hot Springs, Ark.
Active until the end, despite a recurrence of her cancer several months ago, Kelley had spent Christmas at the White House then New Year's in Las Vegas, where she watched Barbra Streisand sing. Friends said she was eagerly anticipating her annual opening day visit next month to the horse races in Hot Springs.
The funeral will be Saturday.
Kelley's death leaves Clinton without one of his most important role models, his most fervent defender and an unabashed promoter of his career.
She played the horses and casinos, sported a flash of white in her black hair, and wore big jewelry and a big smile. She campaigned for her son, charmed the media and delighted her wide circle of friends.
The breast cancer she had once fought off by mastectomy had returned some months before, but she didn't dwell on her cancer or its treatment. Outside family and close friends, no one knew the gravity of her illness.
"She really did try to keep it very private," said Sonda Seba, daughter of one of Kelley's longtime friends. "She didn't want to draw attention to herself in any way. And that was so like Virginia . . .
"She was just the strongest woman I've ever met. She was a true survivor. She was a wonderful example for [Clinton] in every sense of the word."
Virginia Kelley didn't look the part of a role model, especially with a big grin on her cheeky face and a racing form in her hand. Jovial and flamboyant, with dramatically penciled brows and abundant makeup, she was, in the careful words of family friend David Matthews, "not typical of everybody's mother. Virginia Kelley did what Virginia Kelley wanted to do all her life."
During the presidential race, for instance, she called "Larry King Live" from Las Vegas while Clinton and Al Gore were on the show. She said mischievously that she was in Vegas working with local Clinton-Gore supporters.
Answered Clinton, "That's your story, Mother, and you stick to it as long as we're on the air."
Once Clinton was in office, his mother did not become an especially visible part of the White House crowd, preferring her Arkansas friends and her lakeside Hot Springs home. But seldom in recent decades has the mother of a president been more a part of the explanation for her son's success than Virginia Kelley was.
The lessons came hard, to both her and her sons.
After she lost her first husband, she married Roger Clinton Sr., an alcoholic who became so predictably violent that young Bill, by then 14 years old, 5 feet, 11 inches tall and 210 pounds, finally told him, "I don't want you to lay a hand on my mother in anger ever, ever again, or you'll have to deal with me."
The Clintons divorced, but remarried three months later because, as Kelley later said: "He was too pitiful. It was so sad, I couldn't stand it. So I went back to him."
After Roger Clinton's death of cancer in 1968, she married again, only to see her third husband, Jeff Dwire, die six years later from complications of diabetes.
In 1981, she retired from anesthesiology after being accused of errors in treating two patients, accusations she always denied.
In yet another blow to the family, in 1984 her son Roger was convicted of cocaine possession and sent to prison for a year.
Through it all, her friends said, she maintained her optimism and spirit.
As a lifelong family friend, Carolyn Staley, once told The New York Times: "Before there were spin doctors, there was Virginia. She just puts on a very positive spin. It's not that she even has to work on it."
Phyllis Anderson, a senior aide to Clinton in Arkansas, said Kelley "had an infectious laugh, and people loved to be around her because she had such a positive attitude. She was very charismatic in her own way."
Matthews adds another thought:
"One of the things that typifies Bill Clinton is . . . that he recognizes the importance of using women's intellectual capacities and leadership skills. `Is this a job a woman can do?' was never an issue with him. I think he learned that from Virginia Kelley."
The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times contributed some of the information in this story.
by CNB