Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

detailed budget book to every legislator and presented sweeping initiatives to create a new economic development department, reform rural health care, overhaul the state’s inadequate education system and fix the state highways. Since new revenue would be needed to support these measures, particularly road improvement, taxes had to be raised. Bill and his advisers thought the people would accept an increase in car tag fees for the promise of better highways. But that proved to be woefully wrong.

In 1979 I was made a partner at the Rose Law Firm, and I devoted as much energy as possible to my job. Often I hosted social events at the Governor’s Mansion or presided over meetings of the Rural Health Advisory Committee, which Bill had asked me to chair as part of his effort to improve access to quality health care in rural Arkansas. I continued my involvement with Marian Wright Edelman and the Children’s Defense Fund and commuted to Washington, D.C., every few months to chair board meetings. And based on my experience and my work on his campaign, President Carter had appointed me to the board of the Legal Services Corporation, a position for which I had to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The Corporation was the nonprofit federal program created by Congress and President Nixon that funded legal assistance for the poor. I served with Mickey Kantor, a former legal services lawyer who had represented migrant workers in Florida.

He later became a successful lawyer in Los Angeles and served as Chairman of Bill’s 1992 presidential campaign.

As if that weren’t enough, Bill and I were also trying to have a baby. We both love children, and anyone with kids knows there is never a “convenient” time to start a family.

Bill’s first term as Governor seemed as inconvenient a time as any. We weren’t having any luck until we decided to take a vacation in Bermuda, proving once again the importance of regular time off.

I persuaded Bill to attend Lamaze classes with me, a new enough phenomenon that it prompted many people to wonder why their Governor was planning to deliver our baby.

When I was about seven months’ pregnant, I was in court, trying a lawsuit with Gaston Williamson and chatting with the judge when I mentioned that Bill and I were attending “birthing” classes every Saturday morning.

“What?” the judge exploded. “I’ve always supported your husband, but I don’t believe a husband has any business being there when the baby is born!” And he wasn’t kidding.

Around this same time, in January 1980, the Arkansas Children’s Hospital was planning to build a big expansion and needed a good bond rating. Dr. Betty Lowe, the hospital’s Medical Director and later Chelsea’s pediatrician, asked if I would go with a group of trustees and doctors to help make the case before the rating agencies in New York City. I had gotten so big that I made some people nervous, but I went, and for years Betty told people that the rating agencies agreed with their plans as a way of getting a very pregnant Governor’s wife out of their offices before she delivered.

As my March due date drew near, my doctor said I couldn’t travel, which meant that I missed the annual White House dinner for the Governors. Bill got back to Little Rock on Wednesday, February 27, in time for my water to break. That threw him and the state troopers into a panic. Bill ran around with the Lamaze list of what to take to the hospital.

It recommended bringing a small plastic bag filled with ice, to suck on during labor. As I hobbled to the car, I saw a state trooper loading a thirty-nine-gallon black garbage bag filled with ice into the trunk.

After we arrived at the hospital, it became clear that I would have to have a cesarean, not something we had anticipated. Bill requested that the hospital permit him to accompany me into the operating room, which was unprecedented. He told the administrators that he had gone with his mother to see operations and knew he’d be fine. That he was the Governor certainly helped convince Baptist Hospital to let him in. Soon thereafter the policy was changed to permit fathers in the delivery room during cesarean operations.

Our daughter’s birth was the most miraculous and awe-inspiring event in my life.

Chelsea Victoria Clinton arrived three weeks early on February 27, 1980, at 11:24 P.M., to the great joy of Bill and our families. While I was recovering, Bill took Chelsea in his arms for father-daughter “bonding” laps around the hospital. He would sing to her, rock her, show her off and generally suggest that he had invented fatherhood.

Chelsea has heard us tell stories about her childhood many times: She knows she was named after Judy Collins’s version of Joni Mitchell’s song “Chelsea Morning,” which her father and I heard as we strolled around Chelsea in London, during the wonderful vacation we took over Christmas in 1978. Bill said, “If we ever have a daughter, we should name her Chelsea.” And he started singing along.

Chelsea knows how mystified I was by her arrival and how inconsolable she could be when she cried, no matter how much I rocked her. She knows the words I said to her in my effort to calm us both: “Chelsea, this is new for both of us. I’ve never been a mother before, and you’ve never been a baby. We’re just going to have to help each other do the best we can.”

Early on the morning after Chelsea’s birth, my law partner Joe Giroir called and asked me if I wanted a ride to work. He was kidding, of course, but up until then, I had not succeeded in persuading my partners to formally adopt a parental leave plan. In fact, as I grew bigger and bigger, they just averted their eyes and talked about anything else besides my plans for when the baby came. Once Chelsea arrived, however, they told me to take whatever time