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]
Hugh Rodham died in 1993. Dorothy Rodham remained active but valued her privacy and almost never spoke to the media,
[8] although she appeared on
The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2004.
[14] In 2006, she moved into the Clintons' large Whitehaven house in the
Kalorama neighborhood of
Washington, D.C.[8][14][15]
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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