Young, a 1969 psychology major at the women’s college near Boston, was a classmate of Hillary Rodham, who later married Bill Clinton, a glib political comer out of Arkansas. The women both lived on the third floor of the same dorm, Davis Hall.

Young says the media has been on target in describing Hillary Clinton as on the “aloof” side of the approachable-vs.-aloof continuum, but also says Clinton would be a good president.

“We weren’t particular buddies,” Young said in an interview this week. “She had her own gang of people and she was only moderately approachable. She had her own crowd she hung out with. She wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but I respected her.”

The next time Young, a practicing psychologist, hooked up with Hillary Clinton was when Bill Clinton was president in the ’90s and the first lady offered the White House for a couple of Wellesley Class of 1969 reunions.

“It was darn cool,” Young said. At one of the reunions, “they set up a bunch of different activities for us,” including a briefing by Cabinet secretaries Madeleine Albright of the State Department and Donna Shalala of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Then there was the party in the White House. Young remembers Bill and Hillary — I hope they don’t mind if I call them Bill and Hillary — lingered late into the night talking with the alumnae.

“He loved to talk,” she said. “And it was intellectual talk. He wasn’t just putting in an appearance. They both were really engaged.”

Young was a devoted backer of Hillary’s run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Besides donating to the campaign, she attended her precinct caucus in Lake Shore as a Clinton backer and was a delegate to the county Democratic convention.

But Hillary’s loss in the epic battle  didn’t put Young in the “bitter-about-Barack-Obama” camp, and she’ll have no problem supporting the nominee.

Still, she said, Hillary “was the stronger candidate.” She thinks the ex-president might have hurt his wife’s shot at the nomination. “I wish Bill Clinton had played a different role,” Young said. “All he needed to do was be presidential, but he came on in a more angry way. It didn’t have a presidential feel,” and that troubled voters.

Young has another observation about the campaign that’s worth chewing on. “People treated her different because she’s a woman,” Young said. Hillary was often “described as cool, unemotional, intellectual and pushy. I think those traits in a man would be called ‘clear-headed, assertive, decisive,’ qualities people want in a leader. She got a bad rap as a woman.”

Myth alert! Myth alert!

First, in my June 20 column, it was the myth that light rail eventually will go on the I-205 bridge. (When pigs fly.)

Second, on July 4, it was the myth of the annual Vancouver Fourth of July fireworks show being the biggest west of the Mississippi River. (No one has proved it, and at least one list names three west of the Mississippi as bigger.)

Now, creeping into more and more conversations, we have the assertion that the new I-5 bridge over the Columbia River, if it gets built, will be the biggest public works project in Northwest history.

Really? Would that be as measured in inflation-adjusted dollars? Would it be bigger than the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, with Grand Coulee Dam and all those canals and pump stations?
Would it be bigger than Interstate 5?

Or maybe it’s measured in social impact. If so, would it be bigger than the Hanford nuclear reservation near Richland, where scientists made material for atomic bombs, one of which was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945?

With apologies to composer Meredith Willson, whose “Music Man” character, Prof. Harold Hill, I now paraphrase: Ladies and gentlemen, either you are closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge, or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of myth makers in your community.

GREGG HERRINGTON’s column of
personal opinion appears on the Opinion page each Friday. Reach him at
gregg.herrington@columbian.com.