Early life and career
Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas.[1][2] He was the son of William Jefferson Blythe Jr., a traveling salesman who had died in an automobile accident three months before his birth, and Virginia Dell Cassidy (later Virginia Kelley).[3] His parents had married on September 4, 1943, but this union later proved to be bigamous, as Blythe was still married to his third wife.[4] Soon after Bill was born, Virginia traveled to New Orleans to study nursing. She left her son in Hope with her parents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small grocery store.[2] At a time when the southern United States was racially segregated, Clinton's grandparents sold goods on credit to people of all races.[2] In 1950, Bill's mother returned from nursing school and married Roger Clinton Sr., who owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with his brother and Earl T. Ricks.[2] The family moved to Hot Springs in 1950.[5]
Although he immediately assumed use of his stepfather's surname, it was not until Clinton turned 15[6] that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather.[2] Clinton said that he remembered his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who regularly abused his mother and half-brother, Roger Clinton Jr., to the point where he intervened multiple times with the threat of violence to protect them.[2][7]
Clinton with his saxophone at the White House in 1996. He began playing the saxophone in elementary school. At one point, Clinton considered pursuing a career in music.
In Hot Springs, Clinton attended St. John's Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and Hot Springs High School, where he was an active student leader, avid reader, and musician.[2] Clinton was in the chorus and played the tenor saxophone, winning first chair in the state band's saxophone section. He briefly considered dedicating his life to music, but as he noted in his autobiography My Life:
Sometime in my sixteenth year, I decided I wanted to be in public life as an elected official. I loved music and thought I could be very good, but I knew I would never be
John Coltrane or
Stan Getz. I was interested in medicine and thought I could be a fine doctor, but I knew I would never be
Michael DeBakey. But I knew I could be great in public service.
[2]Clinton began an interest in law at Hot Springs High, when he took up the challenge to argue the defense of the ancient Roman Senator Catiline in a mock trial in his Latin class.[8] After a vigorous defense that made use of his "budding rhetorical and political skills", he told the Latin teacher Elizabeth Buck that it "made him realize that someday he would study law".[9]
Clinton has identified two influential moments in his life, both occurring in 1963, that contributed to his decision to become a public figure. One was his visit as a Boys Nation senator to the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy.[2][7] The other was watching Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 I Have a Dream speech on TV, which impressed him enough that he later memorized it.[10]
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