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First Lady Hillary Clinton was awarded the Lewis Hine award for her service to children over the years. (AP photo)NEW YORK (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton got a quick start Tuesday on her job heading her husband’s health care task force, pursuing advice from award-winning volunteers.She also wowed New York school kids, one of whom declared she was pretty, wonderful “and 1 think she’s powerful.”Mrs. Clinton picked up a community service award on her first trip outside Washington as first lady, and used the occasion to question fellow winners whose projects involve health care for children.The Lewis Hine award was for her service to children over the years.President Clinton appointed his wife to lead the task force on one of the most important issues of his presidency, saying Monday that she was “a first lady of many talents.”Asked what she planned to do in her new role, Mrs. Clinton said Tuesday, “Do what my husband asks me to do.”Prodded for specifics, she said her job will be “to perform the function that he outlined yesterday (and) to come up with his health care proposal that he will present to Congress in May.”While her husband was governor of Arkansas, Mrs. Clinton chaired an Education Standards Committee that played a leading role in pushing through school reforms. She also chaired a state panel on rural health problems and was an active board member of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital.For her first trip since the inauguration, Mrs. Clinton chose to forgo the usual government jet generally used by first ladies and took a commercial flight to New York.“She just wanted to fly commercial,” shrugged her spokeswoman, Lisa Caputo.Her first stop was at Alexander Humboldt School in a gritty immigrant neighborhood in upper Manhattan. Mrs. Clinton spent about 30 minutes helping bank executive Maria Alvarez tutor fourth- and fifth-grade students.Ms. Alvarez, a vice president at Chase Manhattan Bank, is a member of “New York Cares,” a volunteer group. She also was a Lewis Hine award winner.Mrs. Clinton said she met informally with the Hine health care winners to “learn more about the programs, why they’ve been singled out, get their advice about what will work.”At the 77-year-old elementary school, Mrs. Clinton offered words of advice to the students, holdingtheir hands, patting them on their shoulders and recalling her own problems with multiplication tables.“My father would get me up in the morning and say, ‘All right, we’re going to do multiplication before breakfast,”’ she told the students. She conceded that the math “was hard for me.”She stopped for a while and helped Chevon Perry, 12, with a four-digit math problem. Bending deeply at the waist, Mrs. Clinton braced her right elbow against the tiny table and rested her chin in her right hand as Chevon carefully turned 5 and 2 into 7.“Good girl,” Mrs. Clinton gushed.She led the class in a game of bingo that involved multiplicationproblems. The boy who won got two gold slickers and a kiss from the first lady, smack in between thestickers.Jump start on health care jobFirst lady talks to volunteers school kids
Newspaper Details
Dickinson Press
Dickinson, North Dakota, US
Wed, Jan 27, 1993
Page 3
Full Page
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Winnefox L.
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