Former President Bill Clinton signed his book "Giving" at the Book Revue in Huntington this afternoon. Here he shakes hands with Nicholas Leung, who attended with Angelica Valdez, Linda Rose and her son, Raymond. Newsday Photo / David L. Pokress
By Laura Rivera
laura.rivera@newsday.com
Braving freezing temperatures, sleet and snow, hundreds stood in line for hours yesterday outside a Huntington bookstore to shake hands with former President Bill Clinton, who was signing his new book.
Outside Book Revue on New York Avenue, the queue snaked around the corner and down several blocks. Young and old shivered in galoshes and hats as store employees took coffee orders and bookseller Eric Cammer cautioned people to hang onto their book receipts — their ticket to a face-to-face with Clinton.
“These are your hard-core fans,” said Cammer, who said he’d worked until close to midnight Saturday to stack some of the 2,000 copies of the book for sale in the store. “They have waited in the cold, they have risked frost bite, and now they’re getting their just desserts.”
In the book, titled “Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World,” Clinton gathers anecdotes from nonprofit groups, businesses and individuals who have contributed to a cause, and exhorts readers to find a way to help others.
It is also peppered with references to his presidential-candidate wife Sen. Hillary Clinton’s do-gooding, from her stint in law school running the legal aid clinic and prison projects to her role as an advocate for children in Arkansas during Clinton’s governorship.
“My wife was my first role model for what it means to be a public servant without public office,” he writes.
The book signing, held just as campaigning intensifies for the upcoming presidential primaries, followed Clinton’s appearance at an Oyster Bay fundraiser for his wife.
Christine Petry of Babylon said she’d camped out since 7 a.m. for a chance to greet Clinton, whom she voted for twice. She also turned out to his last appearance at the Book Revue, to promote his 2004 memoir, “My Life.” “In my case, how else do you get to meet a president twice?” said Petry, 43. After the signing, she said she told him she was “looking forward to seeing them both back in the White House.”
As he shook hands, Clinton doted over children, often asking them what grade they were in, what their favorite subject was, and what they wanted to be when they grew up.
Second-grader Raymond Rose of Smithtown had a coterie of family and friends around to hear him deliver a speech to Clinton saying that he was running for president of his class. “My friends call me Mr. President,” said Rose, poised in a blue suit and red tie, and with running mate Nicholas Leung, 7, of Nesconset, at his side.
Raymond, 7, brought along a project he completed on the former president, featuring a photo of a teenaged Clinton shaking hands with then-future President Jimmy Carter in 1963. As the pair posed for a similar shot, Clinton laughed and told Raymond’s family: “Unlike me, he’s ready now.”
Another student, Aliza Fatima, 9, of Jamaica,emerged into the winter cold with a signed copy of the book.Fatima, who wore a T-shirt with a photo of Sen. Clinton and a headband with signs saying “Hillary for President,” said she was president of her fourth-grade class at PS 131.
“. . .when I came to him he just hugged me so tight,” she said. “He put a personal message — it says I can be president.”