William Jefferson Blythe Jr. (February 27, 1918 – May 17, 1946) was an Arkansas salesman of heavy equipment and the biological father of Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States. Three months before his son was born, Blythe drowned following a car crash. Personal life William Jefferson Blythe Jr. was one of nine children born to William Jefferson Blythe (1884–1935), a farmer in Sherman, Texas, and his wife, the former Lou Birchie Ayers (1893–1946). Blythe Sr. was of English and Scottish descent, with a family tree in North America since the days of the thirteen colonies. Blythe was married five times. He married for the first time in December 1935 to Virginia Adele Gash; they were divorced only thirteen months later. However, Virginia Gash and Blythe remained friends, and she visited him on occasion. A son was conceived during these visits, and Henry Leon Blythe was born in Sherman, Texas in January 1938, eighteen months after his parents had been divorced. Blythe married his second wife, 21-year-old Maxine Hamilton, in August 1938; they divorced two weeks later. Blythe next married Minnie Faye Gash, his first wife's sister, in December 1940. The marriage was annulled four months later in April 1941, without children. Shortly after the annulment on May 3, 1941, Blythe married again. His fourth wife was Wanetta Ellen Alexander of Kansas City, Missouri, and the wedding was held in Jackson County, Missouri. Wanetta gave birth to Blythe's daughter on May 11, 1941, eight days after their wedding. She had become pregnant with Blythe's child prior to his short-lived third marriage to Minnie. Their daughter, Sharon Lee Blythe Pettijohn, died on April 22, 2022. Blythe and Wanetta were formally divorced three years later, in April 1944, and lost touch immediately afterward. Wanetta, who eventually settled in Tucson, Arizona, had no inkling of Blythe's subsequent history until the presidential campaign of 1992 and a Washington Post story. Upon seeing old photographs of Bill Clinton's father flashed on TV, Wanetta "swears on a stack of Bibles ... that that was the man she was married to", said her son-in-law Bob Pettijohn, husband of her daughter Sharon. Blythe's divorce from Wanetta was granted in court on April 13, 1944. Seven months prior on September 4, 1943, Blythe had bigamously married Virginia Dell Cassidy of Bodcaw, Arkansas. Blythe and Virginia remained married until his death in a car crash on May 17,