The political science major used the occasion to urge the audience to ignore the "trust bust" her classmates felt permeating their generation and instead to "keep trying again and again and again."

"You and I must be free, not to save the world in a glorious crusade, not to kill ourselves with a nameless gnawing pain, but to practice with all the skill of our being, the art of making possible," Clinton said, quoting from a favorite poem.

Clinton took her own words to her heart during the next few years as she developed what would prove a lasting interest in children's welfare and a commitment to making the once-marginalized topic a pressing public policy issue.

"Her value system at that time and now has always been that children are extremely important and valuable," says Dr. Albert J. Solnit, former director of the Yale Child Study Center. "That was a social value she expressed in her words and actions. It was the highest priority for her."

Clinton took a year off from law school in order to study at the center where, according to Solnit who supervised much of her work there, she participated extensively in conferences, discussions and research.

"It was an outstanding experience for her and everyone at the center," says Solnit, who is Yale University's Sterling professor emeritus of pediatrics and psychiatry and a senior research scientist.

"I found her to be warm, thoughtful, straightforward, less than candid but always tactful, with a fine analytical mind with terrific retention of knowledge," Solnit says. "She was always gracious."

While a lack of training in the field prohibited her from doing clinical work for the center, Solnit says Clinton was always interested in formulating policy based on the latest research.

Clinton's career has since taken her far from New Haven, but and colleagues of the First Lady say her interest in children and health-care reform remains strong.

"She's very personable and warm--she's wonderful with her daughter," says Theda Skocpol, professor of government and of sociology at Harvard, who has met with Clinton to discuss children's welfare.

"That bond is a very strong one in her life and probably motivates her continuing interest in the nation's children."

The First Lady

When Clinton campaigned for her husband in 1992, she promised American voters a co-presidency, saying, "If you vote for Bill, you get me too." The future president agreed, boasting that by electing him Americans were getting a terrific two-for-one deal.

Before Clinton became known as the First Lady who produced a 1,364-page legislative proposal on universal health insurance that ultimately failed, she was a board member of the Children's Defense Fund, the head of an Arkansas commission for education reform and a devoted mother to daughter Chelsea.

So while some conservatives blasted Clinton for occupying an untraditional role as a politician's wife, the First Lady had the credentials behind her to justify her public forays into policy-making.