Virginia Clinton Kelley

Who was Virginia Clinton Kelley?

Virginia Dell Clinton Kelley was a nurse anesthetist and the mother of former United States President Bill Clinton.

Virginia was the only child of James Eldridge Cassidy, the town iceman, and Edith Cassidy, a nurse anesthetist. During her high school years, she worked as a waitress at a local restaurant. Following her graduation from high school, Virginia moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, to study to be a nurse anesthetist like her mother. During her training in Shreveport, she met her first husband, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., whom she married in a civil ceremony in 1943, just before he shipped out for World War II military duty. Upon completion of her training, she returned to Hope, Arkansas. When her husband was discharged, he picked her up and they moved for four months to Chicago, Illinois. She moved back to her parents while she and William were in the process of getting a new home in the Hope area. While William was on his way back to Hope, he was killed in an automobile accident, three months before Bill Clinton's birth.

In 1950, Virginia married car salesman Roger Clinton, Sr., the father of her second son Roger Jr.