I am trying to help the family of this missing child. She is Bill Clinton’s former house keeper’s daughter, but no one cared and she still couldn’t make it on National news in all the 23 years she has been missing because she is black.
Here is a link to her story: I want people to know the story of what happened to this young girl and her family when they tried to reach out for help. She shouldn’t be lost just because she is black. Everyone tried to forget about her. I want to be burned into people’s psyche what was done to her. I want it to be impossible to forget about her. Please help me.
Three weeks before Christmas in 1985, a young girl Jeffery Lynn Smith went missing from Hot Springs, Arkansas while walking home from school. She was 15 years old.
Jeffery Lynn Smith has an intertwined history with the Clinton family. Both her mother and her grandmother were housekeeper’s for the family. Her mother babysat Clinton’s brother Roger and worked in Bill Clinton’s step father Jeff Dwire’s salon. When Jeffery’s mother Clarice Minner Hay gave birth, she named her daughter Jeffery, after Bill Clinton’s step father Jeff Dwire, because of the admiration her mother had in her heart for the family.
When Jeffery went missing three weeks before Christmas in 1985, her family pleaded with the media for her case to be covered but they weren’t interested, and decided to focus on a ‘higher profile’ case instead, as did the Police Department. They didn’t seem interested in the plight of a young black girl. They left the family to suffer alone and in pain. Then when Jeffery’s brother robbed a bank, the family then did receive this attention but still not for Jeffery.
In the almost 23 years that Jeffery Lynn Smith has been missing, in spite of the fact of her family’s intertwined history with the Clinton family,that her mother and grandmother are former house keepers of the family, and the fact that she was named after Bill Clinton’s step father Jeff Dwire, her case has received national attention not even once, and very little local attention.
The family using what they had, had to do their own investigative work, apparently finding out more than the police by asking questions everywhere.They put up flyers, stayed in the face of the police, and even went to psychics for anything to help bring their sister / daughter home.
Recently a couple of years ago her sister started a letter writing campaign to Bill Clinton asking for his help. For years her sister hesitated asking the Clinton family for help. As she imagined the letter maybe never getting to him, and ending up in a waste paper basket some where. It was as if she was trying to protect her sister from one final blow.
The near abduction of her own daughter and the passage of time has renewed a new sense of urgency, in her for her to find her sister. She went to the store and bought one of the most finest and expensive looking papers to write her sister’s letters on. She said she wanted it to look “too important to line the waste paper basket by the water cooler”. It’s ironic because she has been writing for a while now and she still hasn’t gotten a response. But she believes he would help her if he only knew.
Her sister talks about how when her family sees other missing children on tv. they cry. They cry not only for that child but for Jeffery as well. As she views countless other missing children Natalie Halloway, Chandra Levi, Elizabeth Smart, Sammantha Runnion and others who appear lengthly on CNN, ABC and other national channels for hours and months upon end (apparently the ‘higher profile’ cases) she follows them and grieves for them and their families as well. She says in her journal on a website she’s built to finding her missing sister:
“I pray every day that Natalie Holloway turns up alive because I know the brutal anguish that her family will have to endure at Christmas, on Natalie’s birthday, when riding by her school, when seeing her slippers by the bed. It’s unbearable at times. Makes you want to just run down the middle of the highway screaming her name….hoping that she will hear you and come home.”
She wonders if her sister received national attention ‘just once’, would it make a difference? It makes you want to cry.
She ends her journal with a poem she is inspired to write upon seeing the recovery of another little girl on national t.v.
It is:
LITTLE GIRL LOST
I am crying for the little girl lost
How could you just disappear one day
No one gives it a second thought
No one loses sleep at night
Except us, your loved ones
I am crying for the little girl lost
Are you still breathing and thinking at all
Or are you in heaven above looking down on us
Will we ever know what happened to you
Or will we take this pain to our graves
I am crying for the little girl lost
Wishing that I could hold you in my arms
Praying for your safe return as a woman or child
Hoping that the world would wake up
To help the little girl lost find her way home
I’d love to know your thoughts on this. Also, please let me know if this is something you’d like to link to–also feel free to share any content that we can link our audience to–your posts are great!
Dear Living Color,
I am trying to help the family of this missing child. She is Bill Clinton’s former house keeper’s daughter, but no one cared and she still couldn’t make it on National news in all the 23 years she has been missing because she is black.
Here is a link to her story: I want people to know the story of what happened to this young girl and her family when they tried to reach out for help. She shouldn’t be lost just because she is black. Everyone tried to forget about her. I want to be burned into people’s psyche what was done to her. I want it to be impossible to forget about her. Please help me.
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-53256
I have also cut and pasted it below too:
Three weeks before Christmas in 1985, a young girl Jeffery Lynn Smith went missing from Hot Springs, Arkansas while walking home from school. She was 15 years old.
Jeffery Lynn Smith has an intertwined history with the Clinton family. Both her mother and her grandmother were housekeeper’s for the family. Her mother babysat Clinton’s brother Roger and worked in Bill Clinton’s step father Jeff Dwire’s salon. When Jeffery’s mother Clarice Minner Hay gave birth, she named her daughter Jeffery, after Bill Clinton’s step father Jeff Dwire, because of the admiration her mother had in her heart for the family.
When Jeffery went missing three weeks before Christmas in 1985, her family pleaded with the media for her case to be covered but they weren’t interested, and decided to focus on a ‘higher profile’ case instead, as did the Police Department. They didn’t seem interested in the plight of a young black girl. They left the family to suffer alone and in pain. Then when Jeffery’s brother robbed a bank, the family then did receive this attention but still not for Jeffery.
In the almost 23 years that Jeffery Lynn Smith has been missing, in spite of the fact of her family’s intertwined history with the Clinton family,that her mother and grandmother are former house keepers of the family, and the fact that she was named after Bill Clinton’s step father Jeff Dwire, her case has received national attention not even once, and very little local attention.
The family using what they had, had to do their own investigative work, apparently finding out more than the police by asking questions everywhere.They put up flyers, stayed in the face of the police, and even went to psychics for anything to help bring their sister / daughter home.
Recently a couple of years ago her sister started a letter writing campaign to Bill Clinton asking for his help. For years her sister hesitated asking the Clinton family for help. As she imagined the letter maybe never getting to him, and ending up in a waste paper basket some where. It was as if she was trying to protect her sister from one final blow.
The near abduction of her own daughter and the passage of time has renewed a new sense of urgency, in her for her to find her sister. She went to the store and bought one of the most finest and expensive looking papers to write her sister’s letters on. She said she wanted it to look “too important to line the waste paper basket by the water cooler”. It’s ironic because she has been writing for a while now and she still hasn’t gotten a response. But she believes he would help her if he only knew.
Her sister talks about how when her family sees other missing children on tv. they cry. They cry not only for that child but for Jeffery as well. As she views countless other missing children Natalie Halloway, Chandra Levi, Elizabeth Smart, Sammantha Runnion and others who appear lengthly on CNN, ABC and other national channels for hours and months upon end (apparently the ‘higher profile’ cases) she follows them and grieves for them and their families as well. She says in her journal on a website she’s built to finding her missing sister:
“I pray every day that Natalie Holloway turns up alive because I know the brutal anguish that her family will have to endure at Christmas, on Natalie’s birthday, when riding by her school, when seeing her slippers by the bed. It’s unbearable at times. Makes you want to just run down the middle of the highway screaming her name….hoping that she will hear you and come home.”
She wonders if her sister received national attention ‘just once’, would it make a difference? It makes you want to cry.
She ends her journal with a poem she is inspired to write upon seeing the recovery of another little girl on national t.v.
It is:
LITTLE GIRL LOST
I am crying for the little girl lost
How could you just disappear one day
No one gives it a second thought
No one loses sleep at night
Except us, your loved ones
I am crying for the little girl lost
Are you still breathing and thinking at all
Or are you in heaven above looking down on us
Will we ever know what happened to you
Or will we take this pain to our graves
I am crying for the little girl lost
Wishing that I could hold you in my arms
Praying for your safe return as a woman or child
Hoping that the world would wake up
To help the little girl lost find her way home
Lisa Murray, big sis
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=wo1rxlf_kO4
http://www.geocities.com/murray222@prodigy.net/Lynnspage.html
http://www.geocities.com/murray222@prodigy.net/PresidentClintonLetter.html
http://arkansasmatters.com/content/fulltext/?cid=86501
Hi there,
I know you stay on the pulse of myriad of issues surrounding adoption, so I thought you’d be interested in sharing an intriguing trend recently covered by Essence.com: the increase in black, single women adopting: http://www.essence.com/news_entertainment/news/articles/single_black_woman_adoption_on_the_rise?xid=042909-blogher-adoption
I’d love to know your thoughts on this. Also, please let me know if this is something you’d like to link to–also feel free to share any content that we can link our audience to–your posts are great!
Thanks!
Tricia
Patricia Césaire
Essence Digital
212.522.1229
patricia.cesaire@essence-online.com