Before Trip Home, Clinton Honors the ‘Little Rock Nine’

HIGHFILL, Ark. —  They circled the Wal-Mart shipping trailers Friday for President Clinton’s homecoming--his first post-election trip beyond Washington’s Beltway. “This is where I started,” he reflected.

The president flew to Arkansas, where he attended an airport dedication, after stoking more home state memories in a White House ceremony with the “Little Rock Nine”--the black students who integrated Central High School in 1957.

Clinton designated the Little Rock high school a national historic site, “a place every bit as sacred as Gettysburg and Independence Hall.”

Clinton was 11 years old at the time and attended a segregated school 50 miles away in Hot Springs, Ark.

Last year, the nine returned to Central High, accompanied by Clinton, to mark the 40th anniversary of the day they entered the school.

By designating Central High a national historic site, its preservation will be managed by the Interior Department, although administration of the school will remain under local control.

Now in their mid-50s, the nine are Terrence Roberts of Pasadena; Melba Patillo Beals of San Francisco; Elizabeth Eckford of Little Rock; Ernest G. Green of Washington; Gloria Ray Karlmark of the Netherlands; Carlotta Walls LaNier of Inglewood, Colo.; Minnijean Brown Trickey of Ontario, Canada; Jefferson A. Thomas of Columbus, Ohio; and Thelma Jean Mothershed Wair of Belleville, Ill.

At a dedication ceremony at the Northwest Regional Airport, with nothing but trees and a half-built hangar on the tableau around him, the president told a crowd of cheering Arkansans, “I learned most of what I know driving around on these back roads.”

The Springdale High School band played “Hail to the Chief,” and Clinton sat with his arm around Will VanLaningham, 10, who gave the “Pledge of Allegiance.”

Hundreds of Arkansans lunched on barbecue in an arena fashioned from Wal-Mart trailers circled around end to end.