Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham was an American homemaker and mother of First Lady, U.S. Senator, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. died she was 92.(June 4, 1919 – November 1, 2011)
Dorothy Howell was born in Chicago, the daughter of Edwin John Howell, Jr. (1897–1946), a Chicago firefighter,[4] and Della Murray (1902–1960).[5][6] Her sister is Isabelle Howell (born 1924).[4] Her ancestry included Welsh, English, Scottish, French, and Dutch; her paternal grandfather was an immigrant from Bristol in Gloucester, and many of her recent forebears had lived in Canada.[5]
Dorothy's childhood has been described as Dickensian.[6][7] The family lived as boarders in a crowded house.[6] The parents were dysfunctional and unhappy[8] and prone to sometimes violent fights;[6] they moved Dorothy amongst various schools,[3] and paid only sporadic attention to the children before divorcing in 1927.[4] The children were then sent on a train by themselves, unsupervised (Dorothy was eight, Isabelle younger), to live with their paternal grandparents in the Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra, California.[3][8][9] The sisters endured harsh treatment from their grandparents and Dorothy left home at age 14 at the height of the Great Depression, working as a $3-per-week housekeeper, cook, and nanny in San Gabriel, California.[6][8] Encouraged by her employer to read and go to school, Dorothy attended Alhambra High School, where she joined several clubs and benefited from two teachers.[6] After graduating from there in 1937,[10] she moved to Chicago for a failed reunion with her mother,[4][8] who by then had gotten married to Max Rosenberg.[11] Subsequently, she moved into her own apartment there and took office jobs to support herself.[3][4] She later said, "I’d hoped so hard that my mother would love me that I had to take the chance and find out. When she didn’t, I had nowhere else to go."[6] Hillary Clinton later attributed her interest in children's welfare to her mother's life as well as her belief that caring adults outside of family can fill a child's emotional voids.[6]
While applying for a job as a clerk typist at a textile company, she met traveling salesman Hugh Ellsworth Rodham,[4] eight years her senior, in 1937.[12] After a lengthy courtship, they married in early 1942.[4] She became a full-time homemaker, raising three children, Hillary, Hugh and Tony, in suburban Park Ridge, Illinois. She encouraged Hillary to have a love for learning and to pursue an education and a career, though she had never done so herself.[8] In contrast to her husband's staunch Republican views,[13] Dorothy Rodham was, as her daughter later wrote, "basically a Democrat, although she kept it quiet in Republican Park Ridge."[4]
In 1987, Rodham and her husband moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, to be closer to their daughter and granddaughter, Chelsea.[11] An excellent student as a youth, Rodham now took college courses in subjects such as psychology, logic, and child development, although she never graduated.[4][11] Her daughter later wrote, "I'm still amazed at how my mother emerged from her lonely early life as such an affectionate and levelheaded woman."[3]
Starting in December 2007 she made a rare public appearance in Iowa and other early primary states to campaign for her daughter's presidential nomination bid.[3][16] She appeared at some events concerning women's issues and also appeared in a Clinton campaign television advertisement.[3][17]
Dorothy Rodham died on November 1, 2011, in Washington, D.C., with Secretary Clinton cancelling a foreign trip in order to be by her side.[3]
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