Arlington Heights resident and lifelong Hillary Clinton friend in campaign video
A black-and-white school photograph from Park Ridge's Eugene Field School shows a class of 10- and 11-year-olds smiling for the camera.
Among them are Betsy Ebeling and a little girl named Hillary Rodham.
“I've known Hillary since September of 1958 ... we have been friends through all of these years,” says a voice-over from Ebeling, an Arlington Heights resident featured in a campaign video for Hillary Clinton, who is 68. “Each other's weddings. Babies being born. Parents sick. Parents dying.”
It's the voice of authenticity that is meant to humanize the former first lady, senator and secretary of state now running for president, who's been criticized by some as aloof.
The web video aired Friday for the first time. In it, Ebeling, who was Clinton's matron of honor at her marriage to Bill Clinton, is clearly moved by the life experiences the two woman have shared.
That genuine emotion also surfaced at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July, when Ebeling's voice broke just slightly as she referenced Clinton's parents before presenting Illinois' vote totals.
“I really felt the presence of her parents in the room that day and I wanted to make sure they were mentioned,” Ebeling said in the video.
The two girls came of age together in Park Ridge, bicycling to movies at the Pickwick Theatre and arguing about which of the Beatles was the cutest, Ebeling told the Daily Herald in March.
“We were just thinking of the next 'Nancy Drew' book we could get our hands on,” Ebeling said in the video.
The video aired on the same day Republican presidential rival Donald Trump released a new ad satirizing a comment by Clinton asking, “why aren't I 50 points ahead?”