Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 26, 1995 TAG: 9510260051
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANGIE CANNON KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: SILVER SPRING, MD. LENGTH: Medium
He's 81, a former federal employee. She's 71, a former teacher.
But don't look for them at the bridge table or golf course.
You'll find the Loves in the ``Hillary Room'' of their apartment in suburban Maryland - the nerve center of the Hillary Rodham Clinton Fan Club, which they founded in September 1992.
``Before you are no teen-age screamers and swooners,'' said Ruth Love. ``Our members are serious, responsible citizens.''
When the Loves first got into this, they figured it would be a seven-week labor of love. ``How wrong we were!'' Ruth Love declared.
For the past three years, the club has dominated their lives and has grown to 75 chapters with 11,000 members around the world, including Japan, Great Britain and Denmark.
And about 160 of the most die-hard fans recently got the thrill of a lifetime: a White House love-in with the object of their affection - Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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They sat in gilded chairs under the chandeliers of the East Room. They had tea and pastries in the formal State Dining Room, decorated with yellow and orange mums. They each had their picture taken in the regal Blue Room with the first lady.
One elderly woman in a wheelchair brought a gold box of Godiva chocolates tied with a red ribbon and a rose. When it was time for her photo, she didn't want Hillary Clinton to have to bend down.
``She was emphatic about standing up,'' says Neel Lattimore, Hillary Clinton's spokesman. ``The woman said, `No, I want to stand beside you.' She stood up and steadied herself. She put her hands around the first lady's waist and smiled for a picture. It was so real and so touching.''
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Never before has a first lady had a fan club, say the experts.
``It is incredibly unique,'' ``We've never had anything close to this,'' said Carl Anthony, a historian of first ladies. ``Even when first ladies were going through difficult times, such as Pat Nixon and Watergate, nobody ever formed a fan club for them.''
But then, not many first ladies have been as pilloried as Hillary Clinton, whose image has suffered with the collapse of health-care reform, the Whitewater investigations and publicity about her lucrative commodities deals.
In a September NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, 44 percent of the respondents had a positive impression of her, while 35 percent viewed her negatively. Those ratings were down significantly from the 1993 inauguration, when 57 percent had a favorable impression of her.
The Loves have their own theories about why Clinton is such a polarizing figure.
``I have to conclude that some people feel threatened by smart, intelligent women,'' said Eugene Love, who, like his wife, is a registered Democrat who says he votes independently. ``After 12 years of Republicans in the White House, some people just don't want change. Some people say, `Who elected her?' But what does that have to do with the price of beans? She is working her heart out - for free - to make this a more compassionate country.''
Some club chapters find resistance. A Montana woman told the Loves she sought advice from the Democratic Party about organizing a chapter and was advised ``to lay low.''
The chapter in Sarasota, Fla., calls itself the ``closet division'' whose members ``won't come out to meetings or put bumper stickers on their cars for fear of being mocked, stoned, spat upon or otherwise humiliated in public,'' organizers wrote, half in jest. They took a tongue-in-cheek group photo - with all the members wearing brown paper bags over their heads.
by CNB