Leading With My Heart

"When it comes to lipstick, I say the brighter the better," proclaimed Virginia Kelley of a detail from her famous morning makeup routine. It's a comment that might well stand as a motto for the attitude that carried this remarkable woman through an eventful life.

Growing up poor in tiny Hope, Arkansas, she was the daughter of an affectionate, self-effacing father and a driven, often explosively angry mother. Virginia would revisit these emotional extremes in her five marriages to four men: handsome, charismatic Bill Blythe, the father Bill Clinton never knew; abusive, alcoholic Roger "Dude" Clinton, whom Bill loved, young Roger hated, and Virginia divorced and then remarried out of pity; flashy-dressing, soft-spoken Jeff Dwire, the hairdresser who did time for stock fraud and convinced Kelley to leave her gray streak undyed; and Dick Kelley, the retired food broker who provided strength and stability during an especially trying time in her life.