The Times West Virginian

Local News

May 11, 2008

UPDATE — 11-year-old gives $440 to Clinton campaign

By BRAD DAVIS (AP)

WILLIAMSON, W.Va. — Everyone who knows 11-year-old Dalton Hatfield sees it. There’s something special about the young man. His mother Vickie says all who come in contact with the Kentucky elementary student look at him and say “He’s going to be something” when he grows up.

Apparently that goes for former presidents, too.

When Hatfield presented former President Bill Clinton with a check for $440 after Friday’s rally at the Williamson Fire Station, the man who was once the leader of the free world seemed to nearly come to tears.

“You sold your bike to get this?” Clinton asked the McAndrews, Ky. native.

The reply was “yes” and a whole lot more.

Hatfield feels so strongly that Hillary Clinton should be the next president he not only sold his bicycle, but video games and anything else he could find that “I could make money with” to donate to the former first lady’s bid for the Democratic nomination.

“I was thinking one day how could I make money for the campaign,” he says. “And I just went through my closet and found things I didn’t need.”

“I though he was raising vacation money,” says Vickie Hatfield, who along with Dalton’s father, Bruce Hatfield, accompanied him to the event. “When I found out it was for Hillary, I told him to go for it.”

The result was a donation that for the most part left the former president, who is known as a great communicator, speechless.

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