希拉里有声自传Hillary Rodham Clinton06

“What you don’t learn from your mother, you learn from the world” is a saying I once heard from the Masai tribe in Kenya. By the fall of 1960, my world was expanding and so were my political sensibilities. John E Kennedy won the presidential election, to my father’s consternation 1. He supported Vice 2 President Richard M. Nixon, and my eighthgrade social studies teacher, Mr. Kenvin, did too. Mr. Kenvin came to school the day after the election and showed us bruises 3 he claimed he had gotten when he tried to question the activities of the Democratic machine’s poll watchers at his voting precinct in Chicago on Election Day. Betsy Johnson and I were outraged 4 by his stories, which reinforced my father’s belief that Mayor Richard J. Daley’s creative vote counting had won the election

for President-Elect Kennedy. A few days later, Betsy heard about a group of Republicans asking for volunteers to check voter lists against addresses to uncover vote fraud. Betsy and I decided 5 to participate.We knew our parents would never give us permission, so we didn’t ask. The turnout must have been less than expected. We were each handed a stack of voter registration 6 lists and assigned to different teams who, we were told, would drive us to our destinations, drop us off and pick us up a few hours later.Betsy and I separated and went off with total strangers. I ended up with a couple who drove me to the South Side, dropped me off in a poor neighborhood and told me to knock

on doors and ask people their names so I could compare them with registration lists to find evidence to overturn the election. Off I went, fearless and stupid. I did find a vacant lot that was listed as the address for about a dozen alleged 7 voters. I woke up a lot of people who stumbled to the door or yelled at me to go away.When I finished, I stood on the corner waiting to be picked up, happy that I’d ferreted out proof of my father’s contention 8 that “Daley stole the election for Kennedy.”

Of course, when I returned home and told my father where I had been, he went nuts. It was bad enough to go downtown without an adult, but to go to the South Side alone sent him into a yelling fit. And besides, he said, Kennedy was going to be President whether we liked it or not.It’s a cliché now, but my high school in the early 1960s resembled the movie Grease

or the television show Happy Days. I became President of the local fan club for Fabian, a teen idol 9, which consisted of me and two other girls. Paul McCartney was my favorite Beatle. Years later, when I met icons 10 from my youth,like Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Mick Jagger, I didn’t know whether to shake

hands or jump up and down squealing 11. All, however, was not okay during my high school years. I was sitting in geometry

class on November 22, 1963, puzzling over one of Mr. Craddock’s problems, when another teacher came to tell us President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. The halls were silent as thousands of students walked in disbelief and denial to

the school auditorium 12. Finally, our principal came in and said we would be dismissed early.When I got home, I found my mother in front of the television set watching Walter Cronkite. Cronkite announced that President Kennedy had died at 1 P.M. CST. She confessed that she had voted for Kennedy and felt so sorry for his wife and children. So did I.I also felt sorry for our country and I wanted to help in some way, although I had no idea how.