Hillary Clinton: The building is like my husband. It's open, it's expansive, it's welcoming, it's filled with light. And the exhibits tell a story of someone who loves his fellow man, who cares deeply about the future of all of our children, who recognizes our common humanity.
Kyle Kellams: It is time to revisit Pryor Center archives. To help us do that, our guide: Randy Dixon with the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History. What do we hear, Randy?
Randy Dixon: That was Hillary Clinton some 21 years ago at the opening of the Clinton Center and Library that took place this week in Little Rock. Specifically, it was Nov. 18, 2004. And what I remember about that day is that it was miserable, a cold rain. Weather-wise. I mean, weather we hadn't seen in quite a while, but it was a momentous day and people dealt with it. The media dealt with it, the planners dealt with it, the presidents dealt with it. But it was a big day for Arkansas, probably the biggest day, at least as far as a news story, as big as the ’92 presidential election night. And it was big for us to cover.
But before we go into all of that, let's talk about the planning for all this, because it took years and years of planning. As a matter of fact, while Clinton was still president, they announced that it would be in Little Rock. There was a groundbreaking. And the person who was involved the most, I think, of anyone, was a person who was also involved with the Clintons almost since they moved to Arkansas. He was essential in their campaigns for the presidency. He was known as the Little Rock White House. And I'm speaking, of course, of Skip Rutherford, who continued to work with the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation. As a matter of fact, he was dean—until recently—of the Clinton School of Public Service. Let's hear from Skip here about everything that went into it.
Skip Rutherford: We started the library project in 1997, and I was the first president of the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation and later was the coordinator of the Clinton Library Project. And that project took from 1997 to its opening on Nov. 18, 2004. And it involved the building of a presidential library and Presidential Park and the Clinton School of Public Service. People really stepped up to help this. Not only from Arkansas, but people all over. And I remember one day after it opened, the parking lot was full, and I took a walk through the parking lot and saw well over 40 different license tags from states. That was fulfilling to realize that it had a national impact.
Kyle Kellams: Presidential libraries don't get dedicated that often. So the world's attention was on Little Rock that day.
Randy Dixon: And we treated it that way at KATV. I was thinking last night about how many cameras we had, and we even had more than we did on election night in ’92. At this time, we had a live helicopter in the sky that added a great vantage point. As a matter of fact, shortly before the opening, there was another building constructed in that area. I believe it was the First Security building. And we worked with the construction company, and we actually wired the building before they finished it out, and we had a live position from the ninth floor of the building on the balcony that faced down.
So when you include the pool cameras, we had probably 20 to 25 live cameras when you include everything. Our coverage started the night before—and you'll hear about some of that—but we went on again the next morning on our Daybreak show and then carried it for another 18 hours. We went through our 10 o’clock news, because there were events all day.
Kyle Kellams: You don't have four presidents in Little Rock every day either.
Randy Dixon: And the celebrities—you think about it. Robin Williams was there, Barbra Streisand was there. They had four planes from Washington that came down just with delegates and different folks from Washington who came in. So it was a big, big day, and it was a big day for KATV's coverage.
So let's hear just the beginning of some of our coverage with Scott Inman and Kate Sullivan from downtown Little Rock.
This is live coverage of the dedication of the Clinton Presidential Center.
Scott Inman: Well, Kate, we don't get to say this very often. Good morning, Arkansas. Welcome to the Clinton Presidential Library site, where things are already getting quite busy this morning. The site's grounds already about—well, I would say at least several thousand people here—anticipating upwards of 27,000 people on hand in the site itself, and then another possible 10,000 people in the River Market District today to watch the dedication of the Clinton Presidential Library.
Kyle Kellams: We're talking about the day 21 years ago that the Clinton Presidential Center was opened in Little Rock.
Randy Dixon: That's right. And the headline after the opening would be the weather, because it went back and forth as to how they were going to handle this when the weather did come in. They were watching it all day. They actually called Ned Perme a few times to ask what it was going to do, and they had some of it covered, but everyone was in ponchos, and it was a soggy affair.
One of the reporters who was down in the elements—the current main anchor at KATV—is Beth Hunt, and she was a reporter at the time. I talked to her last week about what she remembered.
Beth Hunt: It had been a beautiful week in Little Rock leading up to the opening of the library, and even that morning things were pretty calm. But as the day progressed, the rain started falling and falling and falling, and we ended up having torrential rain that day. There were tens of thousands of people there in the audience from all over the world, and they stood in the rain all day long for this historic occasion. You knew they had come from far, and they wanted to be there for this day, and they didn't care one bit that it was raining.
I was assigned to cover the crowd that day. I think there were a little more than 30,000 people there from all over watching. And I remember—I'm a small town girl from Arkansas—and I remember thinking, this is history that I'm here witnessing and in some small way taking part in it. The best part for me was standing there amongst the crowd and watching as four different presidents walked out together: President Clinton, Bush Sr., Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush. And it was one of those rare occasions where you got to see all of these presidents come together in a bipartisan way to show support and recognition of Clinton's time in office. It was remarkable.
Randy Dixon: Let's go ahead and get to the ceremony. We had four presidents. The only living president who wasn't there was Gerald Ford, who was ill at the time. So let's hear first from the 39th president, Jimmy Carter. And the Carters and the Clintons have a long history, and he alludes to that in his comments. Plus, there's an apology that we can talk about after.
Jimmy Carter: My life has been closely intertwined with Bill Clinton's. The first time I met Bill was exactly 30 years ago when I was governor and charged with helping Democratic candidates throughout the nation. I came to meet an unknown congressional candidate in a Little Rock hotel. It may be a surprise to some of you to learn that he was late for the appointment. Finally, what I thought was a young messenger arrived, and I said, Where the devil is—and I looked down at my notes to see who I was talking about—William Clinton. And he said, I'm William Clinton.
He didn't win that election, but in a couple of years he was attorney general and then governor of Arkansas, and he and his wife helped me be elected as president. Later, I made mistakes in 1980 during the Mariel boatlift, and the presence of Cuban refugees in Arkansas may have cost him his re-election. For that, I apologize. But I and the people of this nation are grateful that he overcame that temporary setback and went on to become our president.
Kyle Kellams: I remember watching this ceremony 21 years ago and having this thought that I had again listening to this, Randy: presidents are different when they're out of office. They don't apologize that much when they're in office.
Randy Dixon: No. And I had never heard that he had apologized for that publicly. I'm sure not—even to the Clintons. But what we're talking about is the fact that Clinton ran Carter's campaign in Arkansas and Texas and helped him get elected in ’76. Clinton became governor in ’78. The Mariel boatlift that Carter referred to in his speech—we focused on that in a previous segment; we've done a whole segment on that. But Cubans who came to America, many of them went to Fort Chaffee, which did not go over well with voters in Arkansas.
You add to that the fact that he raised prices on car tags, and Frank White, his Republican opponent in ’80, had a lot of fodder there with “Cubans and car tags,” as he put it.
So let's move on next to George Herbert Walker Bush, who also has a sort of confessional tone here.
Randy Dixon: Yes, with a history with Clinton—a hard-fought history, you might say, because it was Clinton who defeated George H.W. Bush to become president.
George H.W. Bush: Of course, it always has to be said that Bill Clinton was one of the most gifted American political figures in modern times. Trust me, I learned this the hard way. And here in Arkansas, you might say he grew to become the Sam Walton of national retail politics. And seeing him out on the campaign trail, it was plain to see how he fed off the energy and the hopes and the aspirations of the American people. Simply put, he was a natural, and he made it look too easy. And oh, how I hated him for that.
Now another gripe. Bill Clinton enjoyed debates too much for my taste. To be very frank, I hated debates. And when I checked my watch at the Richmond debate, it's true—I was wondering when the heck Ross Perot would be finished and how I could get out of there. But it was also clear that President Clinton—soon to be President Clinton—was in his element that night. And upon further reflection, maybe it's because with Bill Clinton, ideas mattered greatly. Ideas mattered to all of us who enter public life, particularly at the national level.
Whoever said that the American presidency is merely a way station en route to the blessed condition of being an ex-president did not count on William Jefferson Clinton. Once in office, he was very much an activist president in the best sense of the word. He devoured ideas with an insatiable curiosity and then pursued them with unbounded energy and infectious enthusiasm.
Randy Dixon: You heard he made that reference to looking at his watch. I used that in a documentary that KATV did that ran during the opening of the library. You can see it now on the Pryor Center website—it's on our front page. It's called 396 Days, which was the actual length of Clinton's campaign, if you can believe that. It was just a year—just over a year. That never happens anymore.
But you can view that, and you see that scene where Bush looks at his watch. But anyway, let's move on and hear from the current president at the time, George W. Bush.
George W. Bush: Fella in Saline County, was asked by his son why he liked Governor Clinton so much. He said, “Son, he'll look you in the eye, he'll shake your hand, he'll hold your baby, he'll pet your dog—all at the same time.”
Over the years, Bill Clinton showed himself to be much more than a good politician. His home state elected him to govern in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s because he was an innovator, a serious student of policy, and a man of great compassion. In the White House, the whole nation witnessed his brilliance and his mastery of detail, his persuasive power, and his persistence. President Clinton is not the kind to give up a fight. His staffers were known to say, If Clinton were the Titanic, the iceberg would sink.
During his presidency, Bill Clinton seized important opportunities on issues from welfare to free trade. He was a tireless champion of peace in the Middle East. He used American power in the Balkans to confront aggression and halt ethnic cleansing. And in all his actions and decisions, the American people sensed a deep empathy for the poor and the powerless.
Kyle Kellams: So we've heard from three of the five living presidents in 2004, but we haven't yet heard from the man of the hour.
Randy Dixon: So let's hear from President Clinton. Now, keep in mind, he was recovering from a heart attack.
And if you've been listening to these sound clips, you can actually hear the rain coming down as they're speaking. You'll hear it in this next clip. But they were worried about his health and his recovering from this heart attack. But if the elements were bothering him, you wouldn't have known it. He was just—he was walking on air at the time. But he talks here in this clip about his hopes for his new center.
Bill Clinton: The thing I want most is for people to come to this library, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, to see that public service is noble and important, that the choices and decisions leaders make affect the lives of millions of Americans and people all across the world.
I want young people to want to see not only what I did with my life, but to see what they could do with their lives, because this is mostly the story of what we, the people, can do when we work together.
Yes, this library is the symbol of a bridge—a bridge to the 21st century. It's been called one of the great achievements of the new age. And a British magazine said it looked like a glorified house trailer. And I thought, well, that's about me. You know, I'm a little red and a little blue.
What it is to me is the symbol of not only what I tried to do, but what I want to do with the rest of my life: building bridges from yesterday to tomorrow, building bridges across racial and religious and ethnic and income and political divides. Building bridges.
I believe our mission in this new century is clear. For good or ill, we live in an interdependent world. We can't escape each other. And while we have to fight our enemies, we can't possibly kill, jail or occupy all of them. Therefore, we have to spend our lives trying to build a global community and an American community of shared responsibilities, shared values, shared benefits.
Randy Dixon: You've obviously been before. It's very impressive. I've been to, I think, four other presidential libraries, and I think this tops them. Now, I haven't been to Reagan's where you’ve got the plane.
But it's quite a place to go. If you haven't been there, you need to.
Kyle Kellams: Now, I haven't been there in a while. I went soon after it opened. And I'm sure you can still do an audio tour, but the audio tour was led by Bill Clinton. You know, you have his voice. And I don't know if this is still the audio tour, but you put it on and Bill Clinton—and anyone who's going to be president probably has some controlling aspects to their personality.
They're probably type A. That's how you get elected president.
Exactly. But this one—at least within the first year—it’s Bill Clinton's voice saying, “There are many ways to tour this museum, but here's how I would do it.”
Randy Dixon: But I talked to Beth one more time because she reminded me that she got a special tour before anybody else.
Beth Hunt: I was one of the first reporters to get a look inside the library the day prior to its dedication with the designer of parts of it. And when it opened, it was the first library of its kind to have an exact replica of the Oval Office. And so it was so cool just to be in there, to be one of the first people to see that. And you got a sense just how excited they were to show this off to the world. And I really think they're still just as proud of it today as they were then.
Kyle Kellams: I mean, this is a living center. They have events, they have lectures and speakers. It's not something that just stays static.
Randy Dixon: And they've continued to build. And like she said, they're probably proud of it now. Well, they certainly are. And to hear about that, I talked to Jordan Johnson. He's an old friend who's been with the Clinton Foundation since 1998 and is a spokesman for the organization. And I had no idea how much they've done in just the last two decades.
Jordan Johnson: That day was a pivotal day for Arkansas and for our part of the country and nation, even. And we haven't been resting on our laurels at the Clinton Center. We've continued to reinvest in the community. We've continued to reinvest in the park. We've continued to invest in the facility itself, and we've got plans for the future.
So since 2004, since we opened the doors, we've had over 5.4 million visitors. And that's a lot. And these people are coming from all walks of life, all places—Democrat, Republican.
We've also made a very strong commitment out of the gate that we wanted this to be a place where it could be an education resource for teachers and students, particularly locally, right within central Arkansas. Today we've had more than 520,000 students and teachers participate in educational programs, workshops and tours at the Clinton Center—at no cost, by the way. That was a promise that the president made. He wanted free access for children and teachers, and that remains an important component today.
And then I can't forget the Clinton School. We've had over 680 students graduate from the Clinton School of Public Service since it opened in 2005. And combined, those students have contributed 550,000 field service hours in over 100 countries. And that school continues to get better year after year after year.
Randy Dixon: Let's hear from Skip Rutherford one more time. I asked him if he had seen that the Clinton Center as a whole had reached its goals.
Skip Rutherford: Four goals in mind: archival, economic development, education and tourism. And when you look back and realize the historical records of Clinton's presidency are here; when you look back at economic development, it totally transformed downtown Little Rock. And for years, there were cranes all over the city. So it had this big economic development impact. Education with the Clinton School, but also with area high schools and other colleges and universities that participated in the program. And the tourism— it really changed the face of Arkansas tourism and I think inspired others.
Kyle Kellams: All right. It wasn't just presidents that were there.
Randy Dixon: No. And I thought this was cool because I was a U2 fan. Bono and The Edge were part of the entertainment, and they were kind of unplugged. The Edge on guitar and piano, and Bono singing. But my wife Shannon was working for the Clinton Foundation at the time, and she was inside out of the rain where they were staging everyone. And apparently Bono and The Edge decided to do a Beatles cover because of the weather—because it's called “Rain,” right? And they worked that up right before they went out. So this was a completely off-the-cuff kind of ad-libbed thing.
So, you know I like musical shows. Let's end with Bono and The Edge doing the Beatles’ “Rain.”
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
