From the S&S archives:
President Clinton gets warm welcome at Ramstein

RAMSTEIN AB, Germany — Ruth Petkaitis took off her amber earrings and, amid a clamor of handshaking and cheering, pushed her way through the crowd to give them to the president of the United States.

"I told him it was amber from Lithuania, for Hillary," Petkaitis said. "He kissed them and put them in his pocket."

An Air Force wife, Petkaitis said that her gift for first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was meant to be symbolic of the president's 10-day trip to Europe, which ended Tuesday.

"My husband's from Lithuania, and I think it's momentous that; an American president would notice the Baltics and go to the Baltics," Petkaitis said. "Amber is what the Baltics are known for."

Aside from amber jewelry, the Baltics also are known for a long battle for freedom that was finally won with the end of the Cold War. The president last week addressed a crowd of 40,000 at Riga, Latvia.

At sunset Monday, Bill Clinton received a warm welcome from a military audience that is often accused of being chilly toward its commander in chief. But, he acknowledged, it is also an audience that has made huge sacrifices in far-flung parts of the globe.

"Tonight, I come here to honor you who keep the torch of freedom alive," Clinton told thousands of active-duty military, personnel and family members at Ramstein AB, which, along with Kaiserslautern, is the largest American community outside the United States.

"You know perhaps better than any other group of Americans that, though the Cold War is over, the world still has its dangers and challenges. America still has its responsibilities," the president said.

"You have done so much in Somalia and Turkey and Macedonia, over the skies of Bosnia and other places in the former Yugoslavia," Clinton said, reviewing a long list of humanitarian and peacekeeping missions that have occupied Americans overseas since the Berlin Wall opened.

"You at Ramstein and at Rhein-Main (AB, Germany) have flown one of the great humanitarian missions of our time ... delivering supplies and hope to people under siege in Bosnia," Clinton said.

"The airlift in Bosnia has now surpassed the great Berlin Airlift of 45 years ago both in time and missions flown," Clinton said to a thunderous applause.

Although Berlin is no longer a divided city and Germany is again one country, Clinton said that he remains committed to keeping a strong military presence overseas.

"Our security and our prosperity depend upon it," Clinton said against a backdrop of Air Force aircraft parked outside the mouth of Ramstein's Hangar 3.

"The entire trans-Atlantic alliance knows that the United States is still critical to its success and to its future," he said, adding that he intends for approximately 100,000 U.S. military personnel to remain in Europe.

"I think you know we need to stay, our European friends want us to stay, and I believe the majority of the American people support our continued mission here," Clinton said, "thanks to the work you have done and the example you have set."

He acknowledged the tough duty military people have been handed in the face of the drawdown and said that they "do these incredible things in the face of dramatic reductions in military spending and manpower that we have sustained."

After promising to resist further military budget cuts, the commander in chief donned a leather flying jacket and mingled with the crowd for more than 40 minutes of handshaking.

"A lot of electricity, a lot of excitement," said Air Force Staff Sgt. Edward Balfour as he jockeyed for a view of the president and first lady.

Balfour, accompanied by his wife, Kim, and son, Eddie, 3½, said that, at first, he wasn't a Clinton supporter.

"But I am now," said Balfour, 28, from Hamilton, Ohio. "After he got into office, I liked some of the things he did. He stuck with helping other countries that needed help, and I like what he did with the economy."

Deborah Cleaver ran up to the president and shouted that her husband plays lead saxophone for the U.S. Air Force Europe Band. Cleaver wasn't sure if the president heard her words in the throng, but he got the message.

Clinton ambled over, picked up a saxophone and played Night Train alongside Senior Airman Andrew Cleaver.

"It took him a minute to catch on," Cleaver said of his jam session with the president.

"But he caught on, and he hung in there," said Cleaver, 28, from Lakeland, Fla., who acknowledged that he didn't vote for the president.

"I'm a Republican. But maybe next time...."