HOPE, Ark. — Former President Bill Clinton dedicated his boyhood home in Hope on Saturday as part of the National Park Service, and he used the occasion to say that the country is having hard times because people are too focused on money and not enough on one another.
Clinton told about 400 people on a windy and sunny afternoon that growing up without a television led him to focus on people and the stories they told.
“We here of a certain age were raised to see everyone,” Clinton said. “My grandfather taught me to see people without regard for the color of their skin.”
Clinton lived in the white, two-story home with his mother, Virginia, and her parents, Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, though the home remained the focus of Clinton’s family life for years afterward. Clinton recalled that his grandfather would serve both black and white customers at his grocery store, an uncommon business practice during segregation.
“In many ways, I know that all I am or ever will be came from here,” Clinton said.
The house and museum grounds are bordered by railroad tracks on two sides. Clinton, speaking with a hoarse voice, at times had to be heard above the locomotive whistles and rumbling of freight trains.
He spent part of his talk greeting old friends in the audience and reminiscing about his youth, which led him to say that he is worried that budget problems in Washington are being addressed without concern for the impact it will have on people.
“We’ve gotten away from being a people-centered society (and become) a money-centered society,” he said, adding that a consequence is that the have-nots have even less because the rich continue to hold a disproportionate amount of the nation’s wealth.
