Times-Leader

Hugh Rodham shares his story from Lake Winola

Wanting to be left alone

Sitting on the make-shift back step of the Lake Winola family cottage last week, Hugh Rodham seemed sad.

For nine months he has assiduously avoided the press.

Now, he was ready to talk.

"I get tired of being a victim. People pick on me all the time."

In bare feet, sweat pants and a tank top, the brother-in-law to former President Bill Clinton and brother to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton worried that his wife of 16 years would "flip out" when she went to the supermarket in Miami on Tuesday.

The Star was printing his picture on the tabloid cover for a story entitled "Rodham Sex Scandal," Hugh said. The celebrity scandal sheet was depicting the notorious Florida lawyer as if he did something wrong during the recent melee at the family cottage in which brother, Tony, was injured, Hugh said.

But, except for a report from unidentified sources that Hillary is livid at her brothers for the latest wave of adverse publicity, and the headline "Hillary furious as brother's caught in sex scandal," the article in the current issue merely recounts previously reported facts.

Police charged local factory worker Danny Coyne with simple assault, burglary and criminal trespass in connection with an attack that allegedly stemmed from a fit of jealousy. Although Coyne accused Hugh and Tony of assaulting him, officials consider Tony a victim in the case.

Hugh is a material witness who says he defended his brother and a young woman, with whom Coyne had a relationship, from a dangerous attack.

I found myself at the Rodham cottage after writing an off-the-wall column in which I facetiously advocated a presidential pardon for Coyne. I also suggested that punishing the Rodhams was only fair considering what they had done to an undeserving nation by campaigning to put Clinton in the White House.

Incensed after reading the piece, Hugh left an insult-loaded tirade on my answering machine and challenged me to debate.

"Let's do it," he bellowed.

The former Penn State football player had calmed down by the time I knocked on his back door. Acknowledging that he eventually recognized the tongue-in-cheek nature of the column, Hugh still thought I was heavy-handed.

Hugh said his overreaction was "an amalgamation of everything that's happened."

"I just thought your thing was very unfair. Toward me, personally. I had nothing to do with this whole situation here.

"As you know, I have not said one single word in nine months to the press. I have not talked at all.

"And nobody ever prints what I say anyway."

[OG intervention: Wait, hang on, just a sec here. He says I have not talked at all. . .nobody ever prints what I say." Wow! Great example of clintontalk! It wasn't printed, therefore I didn't say it. Nobody knows about it, therefore it didn't happen.]

Back in February, Hugh made international news when he received cash for representing an imprisoned cocaine dealer whose sentence President Clinton commuted.

Until the Lake Winola incident, Hugh has been laying low.

"We come up here to try (to get) peace and quiet," Hugh said. "Do some fishing. Have my nephew come out here so he doesn't have to lock the door or we have to watch him when he goes outside, you know.

"And we're not the targets here. It's my sister that's the target. And I know that that's true."

Calling his privacy "nonexistent," Hugh disagreed when I told him that because of his family's significant public profile - particularly his role in the pardon scandal - he and his sister are both legitimate targets.

"That's not an issue. It's not an issue," he said. "The Florida bar did an extensive investigation and cleared me through the whole thing. Nobody mentions that."

"It's not that simple," a spokesman for the Florida bar said Friday.

Because the U.S. Department of Justice also was investigating Hugh's role in the pardon process, Florida essentially took a back seat to the federal probe, he said.

Still, Hugh said he was entitled to every penny.

"I worked for that money as a lawyer representing my clients. It was $400,000, I returned $300,000 of it."

So why return a penny if he earned it by lawyering?

"I was asked to." [OG's question, So, Hugh, if they asked you to put your hand in the fire. . .]

Those people included Bill and Hillary Clinton, who issued public statements expressing concern that Hugh's role in the pardon process would be criticized.

"I never talked to either one of them about the whole situation. I gave it back because I thought it would ameliorate the problem. All it did was exacerbate it. And, that's the problem that I had with it."

Now Hugh has another problem

"I'm not running anymore," he said quietly, as he sat among fallen yellow apples from an aging tree in the backyard of the family home.

"My grandfather built this house in 1921 by hand. Inside here doesn't mean anything to anybody but us. It's got pictures of my great-great grandfather in here with his 13 children and how they've lived in Scranton and this was our home. And, I'm not letting anybody chase me out of here."

Particularly Danny Coyne.

"He's an idiot. He's a hot head. He's been thrown out of every bar in this area. ... Where I come from in Florida, this is a life felony what he did. They'll send him away for the rest of his life."

Calling Coyne "dangerous" and the media "idiotic," Hugh said he's insulted that the press have "turned this around that it's somehow our fault." [OG's question: Hugh, did it have anything to do with your brother screwing the guy's girlfried on the living room sofa?]

Despite the opposition, Hugh plans to testify in court and do whatever else he can to make Coyne take responsibility for his behavior.

"I am going to see this through. Whenever they want me available, I'll be here.

"My whole life has been nothing but helping other people. I've been in the Peace Corps, I was a public defender, and, nobody wants to talk about that. They call me fat, they call me this, they call me that. OK, fine. That's true. I'm 52 years old. I'm not the same picture I was at Penn State. That's for sure."

Hugh called his notoriety "some of my making, most of which wasn't."

Infamy seems to come easy to Hugh Rodham.

Among other cracks left on my answering machine, he had called me a "Republican raghead."

People who know me will affirm that I'm more of a left-wing Depression-era Democrat than Hugh, his sister and her husband put together. Being called a Republican hurt.

The raghead part just confused me.

"I'm glad, I'm glad," Hugh said. "That was my intention. I wanted to throw that out. Well, see, that's a term we have in Florida. Because a lot of the really radical folks just go around with those do-rags on their heads."

Uh-oh.

Just as the term "towelhead" can be taken as an insult by Arabs, some people consider "raghead" to be a similar pejorative term for Arabs as well as African-Americans - referring to a cloth worn on the head as in the Aunt Jemima depictions.

And, although some African-Americans wore do-rags back in the '50s during a painful hair-straightening process, some gang members wear them today as a hip-hop fashion statement.

Even a bad lawyer could make a case that Hugh once again put his foot in his mouth,

"Some people could say that's a black slur," I said.

"Well," Hugh said. "yeah, well." [OG, sarcastically, what an articulate lawyer! I'd love to see some of his trial work.]

Indeed, for now all is well at Lake Winola.

Hugh is planning to stay at the lake until after Labor Day. Then it's back to Florida where he can ponder how he spent his summer vacation and look forward to returning one day to the bucolic land of his forefathers. [OG question: Hugh, do you see any irony in that last sentence? Maybe a little sardonicism?]

-- Anonymous, September 02, 2001