The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaderstwo important events occurred for her and young Bill Clinton. First,
she met and began to date Roger ("Dude") Clinton, a seemingly
well-heeled man about town whose family owned a Buick dealership
in Hot Springs. Then, in the fall of 1947, Mrs. Kelley left Hope for
New Orleans to train to become a nurse-anesthetist. She was gone
from Hope for approximately two years, during which time young
Bill Clinton was left in the care of his grandparents, Edith and
Eldridge Cassidy. Thus young Bill Clinton not only lost his father
before he was born but was psychologically abandoned by his mother
during the crucial developmental period between the ages of one and
three.
Mrs. Kelley returned to Hope and her family's home after com-
pleting her training and settled into a work and social life that
increasingly revolved around Roger Clinton. They were married on
June 9, 1950, at which time young Bill was just shy of his fourth
birthday, his mother was twenty-seven, and Roger was forty. The
marriage was tempestuous. A major reason was Roger Clinton's alco-
holism, but there were other problems as well.
The Clinton Family: A Psychologically Framed Narrative
Bill Clinton spent his early years with his grandmother and grandfa-
ther, who gave him his first introduction to reading and writing. He
visited his mother once in New Orleans, a trip that made a lasting
impression on him. In 1953, when Bill was six, the family moved to
a farm just outside of Hot Springs, but they had difficulty making a
go of it. After the first winter, the family moved to Hot Springs
proper, where Roger took a job in his brother's thriving Buick deal-
ership. Roger Cassidy Clinton, Bill's half brother, was born on July
25, 1956, just before Bill turned ten.
In Hot Springs, Bill attended a Catholic school for two years and
began to distinguish himself academically. In class he raised his hand
so often that one of his teachers gave him a poor grade for deport-
ment (Maraniss 1995, 35; Levin 1992, n). He started at a new
school in fourth grade, "and within days seemed to be running the
place" (Maraniss 1995, 35). Ronnie Cecil, a student at the school
when Bill was there, recalled that "[h]e just took over the school. He
didn't mean to, but he just took the place over" (36).
By the time Bill had completed Little Rock High School, he was