A Claim to Fame : Community: Whether he is or he isn’t kin to President Clinton, Leon Ritzenthaler has given his town something to talk about besides its trees and (lack of) sewers.

PARADISE, Calif. — Right from the start, ever since a 54-pound gold nugget was discovered here in 1859, this tree-lined stretch of Eden has waxed ambivalent about its celestial claims to fame.

At one extreme are the signs that greet visitors who roll in from Chico or Oroville: “You Are Now Ascending Into Paradise,” one reads. “May You Find Paradise To Be All Its Name Implies,” another declares.

And then, heavenly pretenses notwithstanding, there is the near-religious zeal with which this hamlet in the Sierra foothills has practiced the art of obscurity.

“We work hard at it,” says Kenneth Whorton, the town manager. “If I go down to L.A. and tell people I’m from Paradise, they think I’m kidding.”

But on Father’s Day, the forces of eternity triumphed once and for all when Paradise and a 55-year-old resident who claims to be President Clinton’s half brother became, for the moment, household names.

After four months of investigation, the Washington Post published a lengthy report Sunday confirming a story that had been buzzing around Paradise for a year or more. According to the Post story, the birth certificate filed for Henry Leon Ritzenthaler in Austin, Tex., lists “WJ Blythe” as the father. That same William Jefferson Blythe, the story goes, died three months before Virginia Cassidy Blythe gave birth to another son, who later took his stepfather’s surname and is now known as William Jefferson Clinton.

At midweek, Henry Leon Ritzenthaler was off doing talk shows in New York, the true mark of instant stardom in late 20th-Century America. His departure left Paradise to fend for itself.

“All I can tell you is that at church, nobody was talking about anything else,” Whorton says.

Presumably, the same sense of incredulity was being played out at many of the 38 houses of worship in this community of 25,000 largely retired souls.

“There was a lot of skepticism,” says Linda Meilink, managing editor of the thrice-weekly Paradise Post. “A lot of people were saying, ‘It’s a hoax,’ or, ‘I don’t believe it at all.’ ” But the bottom line, Meilink says, was that at Dolly O’Donuts, at Barney O’Rourke’s, at the F & L (Food and Liquor) Market and at Del’s Barber Shop, no one was speaking of anything else.

Certainly Meilink seized the moment as a journalistic opportunity, running a long front-page story with a giant, double-decker headline: “It’s All Relative to Clinton’s Brother.”

But in some sectors of Paradise, the so-called news that Ritzenthaler and Clinton shared a common birth father was greeted with resounding yawns.

Didn’t everyone know that Ritzenthaler’s real father--just like Bill Clinton’s--was a man named W.J. Blythe? Would anyone dream of questioning the possibility that Blythe, a traveling auto-parts salesman, might have failed to mention earlier marriages and/or offspring to Virginia Cassidy--left pregnant with the man who is now President of the United States when Blythe died in an auto accident in Missouri in 1946?

“He mentioned it to me at least a year ago,” says Christina Baldridge, the former bartender at the Wheelock, where Ritzenthaler is partial to drinking Sharp’s nonalcoholic beer.

“And Leon,” adds Baldridge, using the name by which the retired owner of a janitorial supply company is known here, “is not the type of person that lies.”

But in the opinion of some members of this fiercely conservative community, this is one instance where honesty is not necessarily the very best policy.

“I don’t know anybody in their right mind that would even want to claim they were related to the guy,” Delbert Mayer, owner of Del’s Barber Shop, says of the 42nd President.

Not that politics in Paradise dwell for more than one nanosecond on matters of national scope. On the contrary, the local politics are so rowdy that Life magazine once did a story titled “Hell in Paradise” about the turbulent town that recently called a special election to recall four of its five council members.

War and peace here in Paradise center around matters like trees, which no one is allowed to consider uprooting--not even on their own property. Another favored subject of debate is the town’s sewer, or lack thereof. For the record, Paradise takes tremendous pride in being what one resident called “probably the largest incorporated community in this country that doesn’t have a sewer system.”

So strange and distant are Washington, D.C., and its incumbent concerns that Lisa Ritzenthaler, Leon’s daughter-in-law, failed to vote in the last presidential election. She was busy, explained the 31-year-old mother of two small children, and before she knew it, it was 8 o’clock and the polls were closed.

Besides, says Lisa Ritzenthaler, standing outside the family home at the Evergreen Mobile Home Park, “I got a D in government, and I almost flunked history.” When President Clinton, Lisa Ritzenthaler’s newly discovered half uncle, took to the airwaves for his State of the Union address, “It took him an hour to talk about all those programs, and it interrupted all my shows, so I just shut it off.”

Leon Ritzenthaler first told Lisa and her husband, Charles, who lays ceramic tiles for a living, about their possible connection to Bill Clinton about a year ago, Lisa says.

“We passed it off and forgot about it,” she recalls. “It was no big deal.”

But in Paradise, the suddenly public nature of their gnarly family tree has become something of a big deal, Lisa acknowledges. “My neighbors are saluting, asking me to sign their newspapers, things like that,” she says. On cue, Carol McMurray emerges from an adjacent mobile home and feigns an obsequious gesture in Ritzenthaler’s direction.

“I only hobnob with celebrities,” McMurray explains.

With her children, 7-year-old Jason and 4-year-old Brandy at her side, Lisa Ritzenthaler says she is happy for her father-in-law, “although it is all a little overwhelming.” She also says she would not turn down a visit to the White House, “as long as I can drive. I need to keep my feet on the ground.”

Staying grounded is apparently no problem for Leon Ritzenthaler. “He’s a real down-earth guy,” says Calvin Savage, president of the Paradise Senior Citizens’ Center.

“He’s just another face, just another guy around here,” Savage goes on. The fact that he might be the elder half brother of the President “doesn’t change who he is, not one bit.”

But at Barney O’Rourke’s, the luncheon spot of choice for le tout Paradise, a group of Ritzenthaler’s buddies from the Clampers were clearly relishing their fame-by-association. The Clampers is a fraternal organization, founded during the Gold Rush, as a spoof on groups such as the Masons. Members must be invited into the society, whose formal name is E Clampus Vitus, a phrase whose meaning (if there ever was one) has been lost to time.

With a membership roster that includes former President Ronald Reagan, the 2,000 Clampers in the Mother Lode region spend time researching California history, restoring historic spots and partying.

“We’re either a historical drinking society or a drinking historical society,” says Nick Becker, a contractor who numbers Leon Ritzenthaler among his closest friends. Becker’s official title in the Clampers is Dead Salmon, the honorific afforded to any former Noble Grand Humbug, or chapter president.

“We’re all of equal indignity around here,” explains Gary Chaney, the group’s Gold Dust Keeper, or treasurer.

Willie Fink, the current Grand Noble Humbug of the Pair-o-Dice Chapter 7-11 here, was among those in whom Ritzenthaler confided his possible relationship to the then-Democratic presidential candidate.

“At first I thought he was looking for votes for Clinton,” Fink says. But of course, the 49-year-old plumbing contractor pointed out, no one who was not certifiably insane would do that around here.

But then suddenly, Fink and his fellow Clampers were watching Leon Ritzenthaler on “Good Morning America.” Ritzenthaler, it was widely noted among the Clampers, was characteristically laconic in his national television debut this week.

“You just have to understand Leon,” Fink says of the Clamper who coordinates the group’s fund-raising raffles. “Leon is a very quiet individual. He thinks things out. He’s a man of few words.”

In the vernacular of the region, says Fink, “He’s just a regular feller.”

And leaving politics aside, Fink goes on: “As far as I’m concerned, my personal feeling is that if anything comes of this that strengthens Leon’s family ties, that’s great.”

Another Clamper, Monty Van Bibber, who also happens to be the owner of Barney O’Rourke’s, is less generous.

“You remember how Jimmy Carter had an embarrassment of a brother named Billy?” Van Bibber asks. “Well, now Leon’s got one.”

Becker, meanwhile, says he is concerned about what might happen if Clinton made a pilgrimage to Paradise.

“We don’t have a runway for him to get a haircut on,” Becker says.

But a few blocks away, another Clamper, Lee Albright, is minding the store at the Gold Nugget Museum. With its replica of a Mother Lode village and its collection of miniature covered wagons, the museum is among the Clampers’ major endeavors.

Pausing for a moment beside a larger-than-life carving of mother and baby grizzly bears, Albright says he is willing to forgive political differences long enough to concede that a full-grown, 55-year-old half brother might not command every ounce of the President’s attention. The possibility that their perhaps-common father was, shall we say, a man with a past also might not come as the most welcome of news to Clinton, Albright observes.

“With all the other problems he has--the budget, trying to get his programs through--the last thing he needs is family problems,” Albright says. “I can see him standing there in the White House saying, ‘Boy, I need this like a hole in the head.’ ”

But Albright says he has a personal motive for his wish that the man from Hope might someday link up with the feller from Paradise.

“I was adopted when I was 5 years old,” Albright says. Until well into adulthood, he believed he was an only child. Then, several years ago, he discovered and made contact with two half sisters and a half brother.

“I think they’re the greatest people in the world,” Albright says.

He smiles, because when he and his “new” half siblings get together, it is as if they had known each other forever.

“We just have a lot of fun together,” Albright says. “Clinton doesn’t know what he’s missing.”