
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, August 6, 1993                   TAG: 9308060016
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Arizona Republic
DATELINE: PHOENIX                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTONS A GROWING FAMILY? PRESIDENT MAY HAVE SISTER

President Clinton, whose newly discovered half-brother made national news in June, may have a half-sister in Tucson, Ariz., according to birth records.

The birth certificate of Sharon Pettijohn, born Sharron Lee Blythe in Kansas City, Mo., in 1941, shows she is the daughter of William Jefferson Blythe of Texas - apparently the same man who fathered the president.

She since has changed the spelling of her first name to be more conventional, and she took her husband's last name upon marriage.

Henry Leon Ritzenthaler, 55, of Paradise, Calif., also has the name William Jefferson Blythe listed as father on his birth certificate, the Washington Post revealed earlier this summer.

A family member said Sharon Pettijohn's mother, Wannetta Ellen Alexander, also of Tucson, discovered the connection to her family during the 1992 presidential campaign when information about Bill Clinton's history was made public.

Alexander "swears on a stack of Bibles, when she saw the pictures of Clinton's father on TV, that that was the man she was married to," said Bob Pettijohn, Sharon's husband.

Sharon, 52, declined to comment. Her family said she did not seek publicity and did not care whether she was related to the president.

Her son, Tom Pettijohn, 34, of Phoenix, recalled the family's history.

Tom said Sharon's mother married Blythe, a traveling salesman from Sherman, Texas, early in 1941 when he was covering territory in Missouri.

Sharon was born May 11 of that year, according to her birth certificate. Tom said the couple divorced a few years later.

The Pettijohns maintain that they cannot be certain that the William Jefferson Blythe on Sharon's birth certificate is the same man as Clinton's biological father, who is deceased.

However, several details from family members match descriptions provided by Clinton and Ritzenthaler.

All three children recall a father born in Sherman, Texas, who worked as a traveling salesman for the now-defunct J.H. Perue and Co., which distributed auto parts out of Memphis, Tenn.

They share memories of their father dying in a car accident in 1946, several weeks before Clinton's mother, Virginia Kelley, gave birth to their son, William Jefferson Blythe IV.

Vera Ramey, Blythe's sister, denies that her brother fathered any children other than the president.

"You can put anything on a birth certificate," Ramey said in a telephone interview from her home in Denison, Texas.

by CNB