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William Jefferson Blythe
b.27 Feb 1918 Sherman, Grayson County, Texas
d.17 May 1946 Sikeston, Scott County, Missouri
Family tree▼ (edit)
m. Abt 1935
Facts and Events
William Jefferson Blythe Jr. (February 27, 1918 – May 17, 1946) was an Arkansas salesman of heavy equipment and the biological father of Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States. Blythe died in a drowning following a car accident three months before his son was born. He was born as one of nine children to Lou Birchie Ayers and William Jefferson Blythe, a poor farmer, in Sherman, Texas. In December 1935, shortly before his eighteenth birthday, he married Virginia Adele Gash. They had one son, Henry Leon Blythe, on January 17, 1938. Henry later took the surname of his stepfather, Charles Ritzenthaler, after Gash and Blythe divorced. On 29 December 1940 Blythe married his first wife's sister, (Minnie) Faye Gash. This second marriage produced Sharon Lee Blythe (later Pettijohn), who was born on 11 May 1941. On 3 May 1941 he married for a third time in Jackson County, Missouri, to Wanetta Ellen Alexander of Kansas City. Their divorce was final on 13 April 1944. He married for the fourth time on 3 September 1943, to Virginia Dell Cassidy. His last wife would not learn of his previous marriages until 50 years later. He soon shipped out for military service during the Second World War, and was stationed in Egypt. By December 1945 he was posted in Italy. After the war, he returned to his job as a traveling salesman for the Manbee Equipment Company, which repaired heavy machinery. On May 17, 1946, while traveling from Chicago, Illinois, to Hope, Arkansas, Blythe lost control of his 1942 Buick on U.S. Highway 60 outside of Sikeston, Missouri. He drowned in three feet of water in a drainage ditch. Three months later, on August 19, 1946, his wife gave birth to their son, William Jefferson Blythe, III. In 1950 Mrs. Blythe remarried to Roger Clinton; the future President legally took his stepfather's surname in 1962, and is familiarly known as Bill Clinton. Blythe was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Hope, Hempstead County, Arkansas. In 1994 his last wife, by then known as Virginia Kelley, was laid to rest beside him. Data from Wikipedia.org
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