    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [September 27, 1997]
    [Pages 1253-1255]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Hot Springs High School Ultimate Class Reunion in Hot
    Springs, Arkansas
    September 27, 1997

        Thank you very much. What a beautiful day. What a beautiful setting.
    I want to thank all of you for being here. I thank my dear friend David
    Pryor for his introduction, for continuing to play golf with me.
    [Laughter] And I forgive him for leaving Washington. It is a poorer
    place

    [[Page 1254]]

    for his absence. He served us so well there, and he graced the United
    States.
        Thank you, Congressman Dickey, for being here today and for reaching
    across party lines, always with personal kindness, and I might say,
    always to stick up for our beloved State when it's under assault. We
    thank you for that.
        Thank you, Governor McMath, who was a hero of my childhood, a hero
    of my young manhood, and he's still my hero. I'd like to be able to give
    a talk like that today. [Laughter] I was just over visiting with my 86-
    year-old aunt who graduated a year ahead of Sid McMath at Hot Springs
    High School; she was class of 1930. And I said, ``Aunt Janet, do you
    want to come on over to the high school?'' She said, ``No, I don't get
    around all that well, and I've heard you give a lot of speeches.'' And I
    said, ``Well it's not just me. It's David Pryor and Jay Dickey, and the
    mayor will be there.'' And I said, ``Oh, Sid McMath is going to be
    there.'' And she said, ``My God, he's the best-looking man and the best
    speaker I ever heard in my life.'' [Laughter] She said, ``I'll be
    there.'' [Laughter] I don't know whether she's here or not, but she said
    she was coming.
        I thank Governor McMath. I grew up as a child here living on the
    stories of how the GI's came home from World War II and took over the
    city government and the county government and cleaned it up and moved it
    forward. And I remember how Governor McMath stuck by Harry Truman when
    he was the first President who really advocated equal rights for all
    Americans, and he integrated the military, and he said we were going to
    have to get along together and go forward together. And it is in that
    tradition, I think, that so many of us try to serve. So I'm glad to see
    him.
        And I want to say a special word of thanks to Helen Selig for being
    willing to run for mayor and serve as mayor of our hometown, because you
    have been unbelievable. Thank you so much. We thank you.
        I thank David and Keeley for being willing to cochair this effort.
    Asking people for money is always a thankless effort, but they've made
    it about as attractive as you could make it, I think, today. If you
    haven't been through here, I hope you will go.
        I want to thank all the members of my class who asked me to get
    involved in this, but especially the people who were my leaders so often
    when we were in high school: Phil Jamison, Jim French, and Carolyn
    Staley. I want to thank all the former teachers who are here. I see Mr.
    Spurlin and Mrs. Irons and Mrs. Luebben, a lot of other people--I'm sure
    Paul Root's here--see if I make any mistakes he can quote back to me
    later on. [Laughter] But all the former teachers from Hot Springs High
    School, thank you for being here. And I'll bet you we have a very good
    representation from my class. Who's here from the class of '64, raise
    your hands. [Applause] That's the most timid response I ever got.
    [Laughter] Judge Woods, thank you for coming.
        Ladies and gentlemen, one of the things that has most bothered me as
    Hillary and I have worked in education over the last 20 years now, and
    as I have become President and had the chance to travel around the
    country and go into schools of all sizes and shapes all across America,
    is the dramatic decline in the offerings in the arts: in music, in other
    performing arts, in the visual arts.
        We have so much evidence that children who have difficulties in
    their lives, that children who may come from disadvantaged backgrounds
    but may have a spark of mathematical ability, for example, do much
    better if they're given access to a music program. We have so much
    evidence that children who may have been emotionally scarred in some way
    may find a healthy and positive and wholesome way to get out of it if
    they're given a chance to be in a theater program, or to paint, or to do
    something else that gives some positive outlet to their energies and
    their feelings.
        And we ought to be raising whole people. What we really want--since
    we know that over 90 percent of society's work can be done by over 90
    percent of us--what we really have to raise are people that are whole,
    that are good, that have good values, but that are at peace with
    themselves, that are free to make good lives for themselves and,
    therefore, make a good future for our country.
        So I think this is important because it's the kind of thing that
    ought to be done by people everywhere, to give our children a chance to
    have a full life. Here, it's even more important because we have so many
    people with artistic gifts who come here to live. Some of them come here
    to retire. When I walked in all the rooms there, I saw people of all
    ages doing all different kinds of things. And it will make us an even

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    better magnet. It will be a wonderful complement to the music festival,
    to the documentary film festival, to the school of math and science.
    It's something that makes, again, our town special. So I thank you for
    all of that.
        Let me also say, the only thing I'm not sure I like about this is, I
    really don't think I'm old enough to have anything named after me.
    [Laughter] I thought you had to have at least one leg in the grave
    before they'd name anything for you. [Laughter] But if it helps raise
    another nickel, I accept, and I thank you. I'm profoundly honored.
        Let me also say to all of you that if we really want to recover all
    the resources of this community and you want it to go into the next
    century with all the things that can happen here--if you go back to the
    19th century, there's hardly a community anywhere within 500 miles that
    has a more unique history and that has more unique manifestations of
    that history still around, over the last 100 years or so--but if we want
    it to be that way, we're going to have to find a way to pay to develop
    it.
        And David and Keeley have stuck their necks out, and we need to
    support them, both individually and corporately. They need help from our
    businesses and help from people who can afford to do it in accordance
    with their ability to pay. And I will do what I can to help to raise the
    funds as well. But we also need a large number of small contributions by
    people who may just be able to give a modest amount.
        But I want this to be the people's house. I want you to feel when we
    get this done that it's not my name up there, that it's yours, every one
    of you if you contribute to it, when you go through these doors. And
    your children and your grandchildren and your parents and your
    grandparents may be there. That's what we're trying to do.
        Finally, I can't help saying after what Governor McMath did that
    there are a lot of people I'm sure we all wish were here today. I know
    Governor McMath wishes the men who fought in the Second World War with
    him who didn't come home were here. All of us wish that our parents were
    here. We wish our teachers who aren't living anymore were here. I wish
    our four classmates who died in Vietnam and the others who have died
    since then were here.
        But I guess most of all, I wish Johnnie Mae Mackey were here. And
    apparently so does Carol Wilson. So I would like to ask Johnnie Mae's
    incarnation to come up here and lead us in a little round of hullabaloo.
    [Laughter] Thank you all so much. God bless you. Let's make this a
    success, what do you say?
        Cheerleaders, cheerleaders, come on. I swear, this is living
    evidence of a comment that I made the other day that our cheerleaders
    still all can fit in their uniforms. Here they are. [Laughter] Come on.
        Now, for those of us who were here when Johnnie Mae Mackey ran this
    school--[laughter]--you know, everybody that came out of this high
    school and went in the Marine Corps during the period that Johnnie Mae
    Mackey ran the school found that it was a step down in discipline and
    order. [Laughter] So try to visualize those magic days now.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:17 p.m. on the front steps of the
    historic Hot Springs High School which became a junior high school in
    1968. In his remarks, he referred to former Senator David Pryor; Sidney
    McMath, former Arkansas Governor; Mayor Helen Selig of Hot Springs;
    David French, chair, and Keeley Ardman DeSalvo, cochair, William
    Jefferson Clinton Cultural Campus; Phil Jamison, president, Jim French,
    vice president, and Carolyn Yeldell Staley, secretary, class of 1964;
    Virgil Spurlin, the President's high school band director; Edith Irons,
    Lonnie Luebben, and Paul Root, teachers at Hot Springs High School;
    former Circuit Court Judge Henry Woods; and Carolyn Wilson, who led the
    cheer following the President's remarks.