There's a great article about Hillary Clinton in The Standard Times this morning!  Steve Urbon talks about Hillary's time spent right here in the West End of New Bedford back in the 1970's.

During the Hilary Clinton Rally earlier this year when former President Bill Clinton spoke at Buttonwood Park, New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell told the crowd about how Hilary had worked in New Bedford helping the children of the Southcoast.

When Hillary Rodham came to New Bedford in 1973 she was young woman who had just graduated from Yale Law School. The future was a place for change to her as a liberal woman living in the United States. Instead of heading to a New York or Washington law firm after graduating college, she joined Marian Wright Edelman's fledgling Children's Defense Fund which brought her to New Bedford.

In her book "Living History," Hillary Rodham Clinton describes a few of her many encounters:

"Knocking on doors was revelatory and heartbreaking. I found children who weren't in school because of physical disabilities like blindness and deafness.",  "I also found school-aged siblings at home, baby-sitting their younger brothers and sisters while their parents worked," she wrote in 2003, some 30 years later.

An especially tragic image is her description of a girl living in a Portuguese-American neighborhood of fishing families, sitting in a wheelchair, "who told me how much she wanted to go to school. She knew she couldn't go because she couldn't walk."

Steve Urbon's column appears in The Standard Times and South Coast Today. He can be reached at surbon@s-t.com or 508-979-4448. Follow him on Twitter @SteveUrbonSCT

Additional Reporting by Sara Achorn

 

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