Step inside the childhood home of former President Bill Clinton
Maggie Martin, The Times Maggie Martin
The life of the 42nd president started in a 1917 era two-story house in the small town of Hope, Arkansas that recently reopened to the public.
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Shreveport Times
HOPE, Ark.— When President William Jefferson Clinton was just a little boy, he could hop on the Hopalong Cassidy bedspread covering the twin bed in his tiny bedroom here and peer at trains passing by a block away.

And wonder: "Where are they going, and will I ever go there?"

He did, of course. His travels took him from Hope to Hot Springs, Arkansas, then to Georgetown University. He journeyed to England as a Rhodes Scholar and then set out for Yale for law school. He went back to Arkansas as governor and finally Washington, D.C. where he became the most powerful man in the world for eight years.

WATCH: Inside the William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home

And, he made all kinds of headlines — good and not-so-good — along the way.

But his life started in a 1917 era two-story house in the small town of Hope, where he played with neighborhood friends in large backyards.

It is an Arkansas settlement he made famous with these cool words: "I still believe in a place called Hope."

That two-story white house with green trim where he and his mom, Virginia Cassidy Blythe Clinton lived with her parents — James Eldridge Cassidy and Edith Grisham Cassidy — the first few years of his life. His grandmother worked as a nurse. His grandfather owned a store.

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It was just a home in a quiet neighborhood then.

It is now the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home, a national historic site and part of the National Park Service system. It was transferred from the Clinton Birthplace Foundation to the NPS in 2010.

On Christmas morning of 2015, the house was the target of arson and saved when a passerby noticed and reported flames. The fire department was only a few blocks away.

"Even the fire chief said that five more minutes and the house would have burned down," said park service ranger Christian Davis. Repairs were complete in time for the 100th anniversary celebration of NPS and Clinton's 70th birthday.

The park's visitor center includes exhibits about the president's early life in Hope, and guided tours are offered at the house. Clinton lived here for four years mostly with his grandparents because his mother went to New Orleans to continue her education as a nurse anesthetist when he was 3.

The former president — born Aug. 19, 1946 — never knew his father, William Jefferson Blythe II, of Sherman, Texas. Blythe — a World War II veteran — died before Clinton was born while traveling from Chicago where he worked to Arkansas to join his wife,Virginian Cassidy Blythe. No one knows exactly what happened, but he died in Missouri during a one-car automobile accident. (Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III but later changed his name to "Clinton" after his mother married Roger Clinton.) Although he went by "Clinton" from the time his mother remarried, Roger never formally adopted him. However, when his younger brother Roger Cassidy Clinton started school, Clinton legally changed his name, according to park information.

The family moved to a smaller house in Hope before settling in Hot Springs when Clinton was seven. (The second Hope house has a sign in front, but is not open to the public.)

So this house was home the first part of his life.

People who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s will recognize it as vintage.

"It is a livable, unpretentious house and many tourists who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s walk into the historic site and say, 'This looks like the house I grew up in,'" said ranger Christian Davis.

"I was surprised at how modest the house was," said Dennis Dostert of Guilford, Conn., who made rounds of Clinton landmarks in Arkansas with his wife Rose in September.

Because there was nothing in the house when the Clinton Foundation first bought it, members furnished it from period pieces purchased at antique shops, estate sale and other places, Davis said.

"I remember the era, all the furniture. I liked seeing the pictures of him as a boy," added Dostert. "The house filled in a bit more information and there was more personal information here. I liked seeing the Hopalong Cassidy bedspread. That was one of my favorites."

However, the house does have most of its original details, Davis said.

They include original staircase in the living room. It features turned balusters and a handsome paneled newel post. There are built-in cupboards in the butler's pantry, and bead board in the hallway.

You'll also see:

A big radio where they heard all the news, but no television.

1940s drapes with the era's print.

1940s vintage dining room table and chairs. "Probably this was where Virginia discussed and made plans for the future after the death of her husband," said Davis.

Small butler's pantry which leads to the kitchen. It is set with a vintage stove and refrigerator. "Many meals were prepared here. This is where Clinton says he walked, talked and prayed," said Davis. "For his grandmother, education was very important and she and his grandfather taught Clinton his numbers with Rook cards and by tapping the glass while they ate in this kitchen."

Period floral wall treatments.

Photos showing Clinton before he was 4 years old after he was named "Cutest Baby of Hope, Arkansas." (Davis pointed out that the contest is still held during the Hope Watermelon Festival.)

Virginia's large master suite dresser filled with the cosmetics and perfume of that time which might have been used by Clinton's mom. "She loved red lipstick, and she loved to dress to call attention to herself," pointed out Davis.

Clinton's bedroom, narrow and small on the second floor. Besides the bed, there was a child's rolltop desk, befitting a kid, who, even as a child, thought he might grew up to be president, said Davis.

Grandparents bedroom. Two double beds. "There is thinking they might not have had the best of marriages," said Davis. He pointed out two pillows on the grandmother's bed, which say: 'I slept and dreamed that life was beauty. I woke and found that life was duty." (No matter the adults' problems, all three of them made Clinton feel loved, said Davis.)

You'd also learn from Davis about the Golden Book Clinton owned as a child, and that he had his own personal stationery with his name and address when he was a freshman at Georgetown.

The house was a special place to Clinton.

"In this house, I learned to walk and talk. I learned to pray. I learned to read. I learned from playing cards my grandparents taped upon the kitchen windows," he said, in a speech at the Clinton Birthplace Home in 1999.

He has said some of the life lessons he learned while growing up in the house were:

"Mawmaw's main goals were that I would eat a lot, learn a lot and always be neat and clean."

"(My grandfather). He was a kind and generous man. He taught me more about equality in the eyes of the Lord than all my professors at Georgetown, and he taught me more about the need for equality and justice than all the jurists at Yale law School."

"(My mother) taught me about family and hard work and sacrifice. She held steady through tragedy-after-tragedy, and she held our family, my brother and I together, through tough times," said Clinton in another speech."

Thee is no place, really, like home.

For William Jefferson Clinton, that would be a house in a place called Hope.

If you go

What: President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home.

Where: 117 South Hervey cqSt., Hope Ark.

Hours: Guided tours every 30 minutes from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., daily.

Admission: Free.

Information: agsw.org.

More sights to see:

Hope Visitor Center & Museum, located in the restored Iron Mountain/Missouri Pacific Railroad Depot. Clinton stopped by in 1992 to have campaign photos taken. It's a good place to see more exhibits focusing on Clinton. Admission is free. Information: (870) 722-2580.

LaGrone Williams Hardware, 120 South Elm St. It is a family hardware store since 1961. You can buy one nail here, and residents store hunting trophies on the walls when they don't have a place at home to keep them. "People wander around or they tell us what they need and we go get it for them," said owner Keenan Williams. Customer Chris Barnett, here to buy pressure washer parts, said, "Everybody needs to come here. If you can't find it here, it ain't to be found." Information: (870) 777-3111.

Treats to Eat. Tailgaters Burgers Co, 101 South Main St. Sit down at one of the wooden tables and chow down on a hamburger as a slew of Arkansas public figures have done and the downtown crowd does everyday.at lunch. Although he didn't eat a hamburger, Bill Clinton on the campaign trail stopped by one day. Information: (770-777-4444)