DALLAS, Texas–Lloyd and Drenda Clemons have a knack for getting around Bill Clinton’s Secret Service. At the former president’s first inauguration in 1993, the couple managed to cut in front of thousands of eager onlookers and slip into the ceremony without even having tickets. So how’d they do it?
“I just showed the Secret Service gentleman Lloyd’s high school annual,” says Drenda, whose husband graduated from Arkansas’ Hot Springs High School with Clinton in 1964 and, by alphabetical design, is pictured directly next to the statesman in the school yearbook.
The Clemons say that Secret Service ushered them into the event and that they were later able to “catch up” with Clinton. Lloyd says he has known Clinton since the 4th grade. The two men used to ride the bus to school together everyday and both played in the high school band. But turns out band class wasn’t the last place Clemons and Clinton had seen one another: The Hot Springs High School class of ‘64 holds reunions every 5 years and, according to the Clemons, Clinton has “never missed a one.” In fact, the Clintons held a reunion at the White House in 1994 where Drenda recalls being served “cookies and punch in Solo cups.”
“When they saw one another at the White House,” says Drenda, “they both started crying because they knew where they had come from.”
Two years later, the Clemons–who now live in Dallas where Lloyd owns a chain of airport gift shops–found themselves at a Clinton re-election rally in Forth Worth. Drenda didn’t have a yearbook this time, but she was able to find a campaign pamphlet. Using a tube of brightly colored lipstick, she scrawled “HS HS 64”–for Hot Springs High School 64–across the flyer. Clinton recognized the code and instructed his Secret Service detail to pull the Clemons aside for a post-rally meet up.
At a Hillary Clinton rally in Dallas yesterday, the Clemons once again tried to connect with their old friend. The Clemons, who will vote in Texas’s March 4 primary, are both undecided. While Lloyd whole-heartdedly supported his former classmate during his two runs for president, he says “you know, I have met Hillary several times and I still just don’t know who I am voting for.”
Yesterday’s rally, which took place at Mountain View Community College, was packed. With a line of students snaking all the way around the campus parking lot and volunteers handing out t-shirts and hot dogs, it looked more like a rock concert or a Barack Obama event than an HRC rally.
“Can we move up?” Drenda asks a security detail. “We went to high school with him in Arkansas.”
The Secret Service agent shakes his head.
“We thought about calling ahead of time….” Drenda offers.
“Yeah, you probably should have,” is the SS guy’s response.
Drenda cranes her neck and rocks back and forth on her tippy-toes, convinced that, if she can just get within 50 feet of Clinton, he would recognize her.
“He knows us,” she assures Newsweek. “We don’t go for tea and crumpets, but he knows us.”
Clinton’s traveling spokesman Matt McKenna tries to facilitate a reunion, but the rally is packed and Clinton still has three more events to squeeze into the afternoon. And besides, he says “we get this kind of thing all the time.”
Lloyd is not overly concerned. “It’s not that big a deal,” he says, observing the sea of giddy students in skinny jeans and hipster hoodies ahead of him. “I’ll see him again.”
After all, only one year left until the next HS HS reunion.
