264 marieclaire.com.au
GETTY IMAGESH
illary Diane Rodham,
a second year law
student, was bent
over her textbooks in
the Yale University
library in 1971 when
she found her study interrupted by the
gaze of a fellow student. Seated at the
opposite end of the gothic hall was a tall,
bearded man with bushy hair staring at
her. His name was Bill Clinton, a first-
year student, fresh from the University
of Oxford. Finally, the bespectacled
24-year-old with the thick blonde hair
stood up and walked over to him. “If
you’re going to keep looking at me, and
I’m going to keep looking back, we might
as well be introduced,” she said. Bill was
momentarily dumbstruck. “He couldn’t
remember his own name!” Hillary has
recalled, gleefully, of that moment.
It was about as close to love at first
sight as it gets. “It was an immediate
attraction. He looked more like a Viking
than a Rhodes Scholar,” Hillary later
said. Even more than the physical attrac-
tion, they were drawn to each other’s
sharp minds. “He had a vitality that
seemed to shoot out of his pores.”
It wasn’t just Bill who was famed for
his intellect. From an early age, Hillary
was a bright and forthright child. Born
in Chicago on October 26, 1947, Hillary
and her brothers, Hugh and Tony, grew
up in a suburban home with mother
Dorothy, a housewife, and father Hugh,including then Democratic Party activist
Sara Ehrman: “She was so gifted and
promising. I thought her life should be
on a bigger stage.” In 1976, a year after
they married, Bill was elected attorney
general of Arkansas, then, two years
later, its governor. Hillary became the
first lady of Arkansas, juggling the role
with her job as lawyer,
and, later, mum to
daughter Chelsea.
When Bill failed to
get re-elected for a
second term in 1980,
she received much of
the blame. “Hillary can
be abrupt, and that can
be seen as her being
arrogant, rude, uncaring- none of which I think
she really is,” says Sam
Bratton, one of Bill’s
staff members at the time. “But that
was considered to have been part of the
reason for the loss.” The public was
rarely treated to Hillary’s laugh, “a big,
rolling guffaw that can send cats run-
ning from the room”. Nor were they
party to her close relationship with
Chelsea. The pair often went on holiday
together, and when Hillary was abroad
on business she’d help Chelsea do her
a Republican and tough disciplinarian,
who ran a small furnishings business.
Aged just 13, Hillary took her political
cues from her father, canvassing for
Richard Nixon in his 1960 presidential
campaign. At high school she ran,
unsuccessfully, for student government
president, and at the all-girls Wellesley
College in Massachusetts, she was
president of the Young Republicans,
before moving towards the Democrats.
Her college classmates remember
Hillary as serious
and self-righteous, with
one saying, “I wouldn’t
say she was popular.
She was a little too
intimidating for that.”
Hillary was certainly
focused. She cam-
paigned for the
increased recruitment
of black students and,
aged 21, was the first
student in the college’s
history to make a grad-
uation speech – one so rousing it elicited
a seven-minute standing ovation.
After the fateful meeting with
Bill in 1971, Hillary’s future seemed to be
set in stone. They married four years
later, when the two were already
ensconced in the state of Arkansas
where Bill’s political career was kicking
off. The decision to follow Bill after
graduation disappointed many friends,“It was an
immediate
attraction. Bill
had a vitality that
seemed to shoot
out of his pores”- Hillary on love at first
sight when she met Bill
LOVE AND
ALLEGIANCE
Left: at 21, Hillary
was president of
the Young
Republicans at
Wellesley College.
By 1971, she
had joined the
Democrats and
fallen in love with
Bill Clinton.
Below: the First
Lady speaks to
Brooklyn College
students about
the importance
of education
in 1995.Above: Hillary with
daughter Chelsea and
Bill on the day he was
elected US president,
November 3, 1992.
Right: Hillary and
Chelsea hold
orphaned babies
during a tour of
Mother Teresa’s
orphanage in New
Delhi, India, in 1995.