Virginia Kelley (1923-1994) // The Woman Who Raised A President

Bill Clinton is in every sense his mother's son.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the best way to understand the boy from Hope, Ark., who grew up to be president of the United States is to appreciate Virginia Dell Kelley, who died in her sleep early Thursday.

The president, who traveled alone from Washington, arrived in Hot Springs, Ark., on Thursday afternoon. Hillary Rodham Clinton and their 13-year-old daughter, Chelsea, were to join him today.

The funeral is Saturday.

As the president left the White House, the first lady walked arm-in-arm with him to a helicopter waiting on the South Lawn, and in a show of affection rarely seen publicly, saw her husband off with a hug and a kiss.

"He's sad," said Chief of Staff Mack McLarty, who grew up with Clinton. "There's always a feeling of loss, but he also was so grateful for the time he had with his mother during the holiday."

Clinton last saw his mother Dec. 28, hugging her goodbye on the porch of her lakeside home before he headed to South Carolina.

The public came to know Mrs. Kelley, who was 70 years old when she died of complications relating to breast cancer, by her outward flamboyance: the white streak in her black-dyed hair, the painted eyebrows high on her forehead, the silver necklaces and golden shoes, the outings to Las Vegas and Churchill Downs.

She also gained attention for her novel marital history. Before finding security with retired stockbroker Richard Kelley, she had lost three husbands, including the president's father, a traveling salesman with a secret life of previous marriages and children, and his adopted father, a car dealer who drank too much and tormented the family with verbal and physical abuse.

But behind Mrs. Kelley's exotic public persona was a strong woman who shaped Bill Clinton and directed him toward what she long ago took to be his destiny at the White House.

"They had a remarkable way of engaging each other in conversations," McLarty said. "She inspired all of us."

Mrs. Kelley was born Virginia Cassidy on June 6, 1923, in Bodcaw, a community about 10 miles from Hope, where her parents ran a grocery store.

Most of Clinton's defining characteristics came from her. A clear line can be drawn from his perseverance in the political world to her resilience in the face of personal tragedy and trauma.

Carolyn Yeldell Staley, one of Clinton's high-school friends, said Virginia's themes were "You can do anything, this will not get us down, no struggle is insurmountable."

Clinton's gregariousness, his fun-loving nature, his gladhanding, his hugging, his propensity to empathize with whomever he happens to be talking to at the moment _ all those were traits he picked up from Mrs. Kelley.

To some degree Virginia Kelley reflected the contradictions of her adopted hometown, Hot Springs, a city that cherished and protected its children, holding them up as symbols of righteousness, while at the same time enjoying a very different culture centered around nightclubs, racetracks and gambling.

Clinton's mother invested most of her hopes and ambitions in her son from the day he was born on Aug. 19, 1946, three months after William Jefferson Blythe, Bill's father and her first husband, died in a car accident. When the boy called Billy was 2, Virginia left him with her parents in Hope for nearly two years while she studied anesthesiology in New Orleans so that she would have a profession that might provide her son a better life.

She married car dealer Roger Clinton when Billy was 4. Billy called his stepfather "Daddy," but they essentially reversed roles during Bill's adolescence, when Roger's alcoholism forced the son to become the man of the house. Clinton not only sheltered his mother from her husband's abuse, he also served as a father figure to his half-brother, Roger Clinton Jr., who was 10 years younger.

"Bill protected me and took responsibility at such an early age," Mrs. Kelley once said of her son. "There is no way I can describe to you what he has meant to me."

Mrs. Kelley said she and her son had only one strong disagreement during Clinton's teenage years. After she divorced Roger Clinton in 1962, citing several instances of physical abuse, Bill pleaded with her not to remarry him.

""You're making a big mistake, mother,"' she recalled her son telling her when she took Roger back three months after the divorce.

She said she remarried Roger not because she loved him but because she felt pity for him. Roger Clinton's health was on a downward slide that would lead to his death from cancer six years later.

By the time Clinton had established himself as a Hot Springs golden boy in high school, his mother had transformed the living room of their brick rambler into a veritable Bill Clinton shrine. He was the heroic son in a dysfunctional family.

Virginia was already telling friends that her boy would be president someday. For posterity, she filmed his every move with a home movie camera. When he delivered the benediction at the graduation of the Hot Springs High class of 1964, she typed out copies of his speech and sent it to friends and relatives.

She wrote to her mother. "I was so proud of him I nearly died. He was truly in all his glory that night."

There was a symbiotic relationship between mother and son during Clinton's long rise to fame. He was motivated to please her and she would let nothing get in his way. On the day he had his final interview for a prestigious Rhodes scholarship, she refused to take calls from doctors seeking her services as a nurse anesthesiologist.

"I had to be near the phone when Bill called," she said.

In the moments after he had been selected, Clinton told an interviewer he was proud to win such an honor for his mother.

In many ways Clinton centered his political philosophy on the lessons of his mother's life. His oft-stated belief in future preference, the idea that one generation should sacrifice for the betterment of the next, was articulated by one of his college professors but had its roots in the sacrifices his mother had made for him.

Mrs. Kelley studied nursing and worked long hours at her job to pay for her son's education. She ignored the slights of small-town aristocrats who disparaged her colorful ways and the dreams she had for her son. Her life, said one of Clinton's friends, was one warm embrace.

On the last night that Clinton spent with his mother, last week in Hot Springs, they went to her favorite restaurant across from the Oaklawn race track, where Virginia Kelley was a regular patron known for her $2 bets. Virginia and her husband, Dick, Clinton and his wife and Chelsea were there along with four of Clinton's high-school friends. As they finished eating pizza, Clinton turned to his friend David Leopoulos and said, "What do you want to do next?" "Let's go bowling," Leopoulos said. He and Clinton looked at Virginia Kelley. "That's okay, isn't it?" he asked.

"She just rolled her eyes," Leopoulos said. "The same fun-loving look of love and exasperation we'd get from her when we were kids. That's my last memory of her _ that look of joyful pride. People don't understand.

". . . What she did with her two hands and desire, she accomplished far more than most people do with everything material in the world."

_ Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.