WP,pg1: A Mother's Strength, a Candidate's Ambition: Dorothy Rodham Shaped, Inspired Clinton

[DeepModem Mom]

A Mother's Strength, a Candidate's Ambition
Dorothy Rodham's Experiences Shaped and Inspire Clinton
By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 23, 2007; Page A01


Dorothy Rodham, in a rare public appearance in 2000. (Rich Lipski - Twp)

Family friends offer harmless details about Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham. She likes to read. She travels on her own. She loves the National Zoo.

Down-to-earth and sturdy, with gray hair, she does not bear an obvious physical resemblance to her daughter, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but even if she did, few people would recognize her because she is rarely seen at public events. In an instance last summer when she was -- during a portrait unveiling at the Smithsonian Institution for her daughter and son-in-law -- Rodham, 88, sat unobtrusively in the front row, holding onto her granddaughter's arm.

When President Bush was asked once to name his favorite philosopher, he replied that it is Jesus Christ, a revealing response that would become an essential part of his biography. In a recent Democratic debate, Clinton offered a similarly telling insight. Asked for a defining moment in her life, one that put her on the path toward running for president, Clinton credited the women's movement and said her mother is her inspiration. "More personally, I owe it to my mother, who never got a chance to go to college, who had a very difficult childhood, but who gave me a belief that I could do whatever I set my mind," Clinton said....

***

Born to dysfunctional, unhappy parents who divorced in 1927, Dorothy Howell was sent away from home at age 8, making an unsupervised cross-country train journey with her younger sister to live with unwelcoming grandparents. Dickensian events followed. The girl was banished to her bedroom for an entire year except for school after her grandmother caught her trick-or-treating. She moved out on her own at age 14, taking a job as a nanny....

***

A Democrat in her husband's conservative household and a dutiful stay-at-home mother who inculcated a love of learning in her only daughter, Rodham seems to have poured her curiosity about the world into her oldest child....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092201175.html?nav=hcmodule

[ElizabethDC]

1. Interesting article, thanks for posting it! n/t

[DeepModem Mom]

2. It is! I knew about the abusive father, but had no idea about the mother's Dickensian childhood. nt

[ElizabethDC]

3. I know. It's something that I had heard about before

and I think it could explain some of Hillary's views on things, particularly divorce.