Dorothy howell rodham civil rights
In an exclusive excerpt from her new memoir, Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton remembers her mother, Dorothy Howell Rodham—the struggles she overcame and the lessons she passed along.
From the moment I first held Chelsea in my arms in the hospital in Little Rock, I knew my mission in life was to give her every opportunity to thrive. As she’s grown up and stepped out into the world in her own right, my responsibilities have changed. Now that she’s expecting a child of her own, I’m preparing for a new role that I’ve looked forward to for years: grandmother. And I’ve found myself thinking a lot about my relationship with my own mom, as an adult as well as in childhood, and what lessons I learned from her.
When I became Secretary of State, Mom was just about to turn She had been living with us in Washington for the past few years, ever since being alone in her apartment overlooking the zoo on Connecticut Avenue became too much. Like so many Americans of my generation, I felt both blessed to have these extra years with an aging parent and very responsible for making sure she was comfortable and well cared for. Mom gave me so much unconditional love and support when I was growing up in Park Ridge, Illinois; now it was my turn to support her. Of course I never would have let her hear me describe it that way. Dorothy Howell Rodham was a fiercely independent woman. She couldn’t bear the thought of being a burden to anyone.
Having her so close became a source of great comfort to me, especially in the difficult period after the end of the campaign. I’d come home from a long day at the Senate or the State Department, slide in next to her at the small table in our breakfast nook, and let everything just pour out.
Mom loved mystery novels, Mexican food, Dancing with the Stars (we actually managed to get her to a taping of the show once), and most of all her grandchildren. My nephew Zach Rodham’s school was just five minutes away, and he came over many afternoons to visit Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton was born on October 26, , in Chicago and spent her childhood in Park Ridge, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. She is the eldest daughter of Hugh Rodham and Dorothy Howell Rodham. Clinton has two younger brothers, Hugh, Jr. and Anthony. Hillary Rodham engaged in politics early. As a preteen in , she canvassed for Richard Nixon in Chicago. When she was 14 in , she saw the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., speak in Chicago on a youth group trip. His speech inspired her to be a public servant. Her high school history teacher encouraged her early conservative ideals, and in she campaigned for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the presidential campaign. Rodham attended Wellesley College, an all-female college near Boston, Massachusetts, from to She participated in student politics and served as president of the Young Republicans Club. Rodham changed her political outlook after witnessing Vietnam War protests, Civil Rights riots, the struggle of her black classmates and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. By the end of her undergraduate career, she identified as a Democrat. Thanks for joining us this summer as we revisited some of the , memorable lives featured in The New York Times’s archive. We wandered back into a fatal Alaskan odyssey and over the rainbow. We heard the echoes of shots that reverberated in America and around the world. We mingled with criminals, leaders, protesters, artists and athletes, many who forever changed their professions. We relived the first steps on the moon and the speech that divided India and Pakistan. And we asked Anderson Cooper, Cory Booker, Dominique Dawes, Tom Brokaw and David H. Petraeus whom from our archives they would dine with, and why. You can find more fascinating New York Times obituaries, year round, here and on our Twitter feed. Click here for the continuing feature “Notable Deaths of ”, and if you want to revisit some of the most momentous obituaries to have appeared in The Times, you might look for “The Book of the Dead,” a compilation of obituaries dating back to the newspaper’s founding in It will be available for preorder and will appear on store shelves in October. We welcome your feedback about Not Forgotten here. We hope you enjoyed it. —-Shreeya Sinha She died young. She died violently. She was a global celebrity in the broadest sense, a woman of startling charisma who became famous when she married the heir to the English throne and even more famous when she divorced him and embarked on a life of her own. But the sudden death of Diana, the Princess of Wales, alongside her lover in a fiery car crash in a Paris tunnel on Aug. 31, , elevated her into something else entirely: a symbol of a nation’s emotional and generational conflicts, a blank slate on which an entire people — and to some extent, the world at large — could project their own fears, prejudices and passions. Britain went a little crazy. For a few di Hazel Price remembers shopping for maternity clothes with Dorothy Rodham, two fast friends and expectant moms poring over the racks at one of Scranton’s most storied department stores. It was , and Price was pregnant with her daughter, Charlotte. Rodham was expecting her first child, also a girl whom she and her husband, city native Hugh E. Rodham, would name Hillary and who would later become one of the most powerful and influential women in American politics and government. “Scranton Dry Goods – that was her favorite store in town,” Price said of Rodham, who died early Tuesday in Washington at age “She would come in to visit and even when the girls got older, we would go there for school clothes and that kind of thing. “She always had a special place in her heart for Scranton.” Price and other area residents who knew Rodham, mother of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and mother-in-law of former President Bill Clinton, remembered her as a devoted mother and grandmother who rose above a less-than-ideal upbringing and became a strong guiding presence for her family. “To come from – as Hillary used to call it – a loveless childhood, to be so loving and dedicated, it just says what an indomitable spirit she was,” former Scranton Mayor James Barrett McNulty said. “Hillary possesses the same spirit – tough, tough, but at the same time very compassionate. When you see Hillary Clinton, you see Dorothy Rodham.” Price, 86, got acquainted with Dorothy Howell shortly after Hugh Rodham met his bride-to-be in in Chicago and brought her to Scranton to introduce her to his family, who lived on Diamond Avenue. At the time, Price lived next door in a house her family rented from the Rodhams. Over the years, they grew into good friends, rarely missing a chance to socialize when Rodham happened to be in town, she said. Charlotte and Hillary became childhood playmates. Although Rodh Dorothy Rodham, the Iron Will Behind Hillary Clinton
Farewell
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