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"I think there were still differences," she said. "The president was always a boy and the secretary was always a girl."

A young Hillary Rodham tried to change that, her friends say — not to make some big political or feminist statement, but because she thought she could. Ebeling, her good friend, says that Rodham ran for student council president and lost.

"I was her campaign manager," she said. "So I advised her — that, probably, that one didn't turn out so well."

Hillary Rodham also sent a letter to NASA, hoping to become an astronaut and got a letter back saying girls need not apply. But the fact that she even tried says something about the Park Ridge state of mind and the way Rodham was raised. Girls assumed they would go to college. And everyone was encouraged by teachers and pastors to look outside the cocoon of the suburbs, said Price.

"Park Ridge helped to make us care about the world." she said. "And I think what made her extraordinary was that she realized it a whole lot earlier on that certainly I did or anybody else I know."

After graduation, there were a lot of places Rodham called home. Wellesley College, where she shed her Republican upbringing and became a Democrat. Then law school at Yale. Then it was on to Arkansas to follow Bill Clinton, who would become her husband and the state's governor — and eventually the White House.

But when it came time to choose a place to put down roots, Bill and Hillary Clinton found a sheltered suburb much like Park Ridge: Chappaqua, N.Y., an affluent enclave an hour on commuter rail from Manhattan.

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Local residents greet Clinton in front of the Chappaqua Fire Department in 2000. Chris Hondros/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Local residents greet Clinton in front of the Chappaqua Fire Department in 2000.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

The striking thing about downtown Chappaqua is just how similar it is to downtown Park Ridge — the little shops and restaurants, the feel of being in a town square, straight out of another era.

"It still has a little bit of that mom-and-pop shop thing going on, which I think is a great thing," said Grace Bennett, publisher of Inside Chappaqua magazine.

And the way people describe Chappaqua today is similar to the way that Hillary Clinton's friends describe Park Ridge of the 1950s.

"It's a nice, low-key town. It's a small little town, and it's a fun town to be in and we love our neighbors and we love our town," said Virginia Shasha, who works at ICD Contemporary Jewelry, where the former president sometimes buys jewelry for his wife.

The Clintons live on a quiet street about a mile up the road from downtown Chappaqua. Their home is a white farm house near where the street dead ends at a cul-de-sac. Bennett drove me up to see it in her Subaru.

Clinton has come a long way, but, as one friend put it, you can take the girl out of Park Ridge, but you can't take Park Ridge out of the girl. Back at the high school, her old friends Betsy Ebeling and Mike Andrews reflect on how growing up there affected their worldview.

"Those opportunities and that kind of glance into the outside world was available to us, yet we were still protected," Ebeling said.

Andrews has another word for it: "sheltered."

"But in a good way," Ebeling said. "It was what, truthfully, what we would like for our kids today and our grandchildren — that you can have a breathing space."

Hillary Clinton never moved back to Park Ridge, and in the '80s, her parents sold their house on there. But when she talks on the campaign trail about the America she wants to build, you can hear hints of '50s-era Park Ridge.