My Friendship with Hillary Clinton’s Mother: The Influence of Observant, Worldly, Hopeful Mrs. Rodham

Dorothy Howell at the time of her 1942 marriage.

Dorothy Rodham with her husband Hugh bidding farewell to their daughter, before departing the White House after the 1993 Inauguration festivities.

By 2005, Dorothy Rodham didn’t need to walk to the National Zoo alone. After all, her son-in-law had been President and her daughter was then a United States Senator and an aide or companion could easily have been hired. The mother of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who died at age 92 on Tuesday this week, liked her time alone, she once told me, “just to think.” Even though she termed her walking by then “labored,” in one of the letters she wrote me over the years, she’d determined to make her trip a daily goal and kept at it steadily. Her treat in going to the zoo, however, was not in observing the exotic beasts behind bars: “I find myself watching the people more than the animals.”

We first met at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens where I, writing a forecast of what sort of history her daughter might make as a potential First Lady, interviewed her briefly the day before the July 1992 Democratic National Convention. Without pause, she predicted that Hillary would most be like Eleanor Roosevelt, the former First Lady whose global humanitarian work led to her being called “First Lady of the World.” Mrs. Rodham then seemed pained she might be bragging and added humbly, “Of course, I am her mother.”

Dorothy Rodhman in costume as a nun with Hillary as Dolley Madison at one of the First Lady’s famous Halloween-Birthday parties.

Despite our multi-generation gap, we hit it off – because we were both Gemini, she said. I once visited her at home in Little Rock, Arkansas (where she lived during the Clinton gubernatorial and White House years), doing research in preparation for Hillary’s upcoming 50th birthday celebration. In her townhouse, she guided me down the cellar stairs, the wall lined with old family pictures, each with a story. I’d called an airport cab but the mother of arguably, by then, one of the world’s most famous women, insisted I stay for cake after which she drove me herself.

Mrs. Rodham with her daughter Hillary at her granddaughter Chelsea’s wedding last year. (Getty)

Ultimately, she extended an incredible trust of discretion, not naively, but with the best hope it would be honored, and which effected the ensuring of it. Often, she offered astute observations on the feigned persona of political figures she’d met, expressing “disappointment,” yet always balanced with a grounded understanding for their perspective. She saw people as people, regardless of their status. No matter her access to power, Mrs. Rodham lacked presumption or entitlement, and her emotions ranged from strength to sentimentality. While in Chicago to celebrate Hillary’s birthday in 1997, she didn’t trust her emotions to join her children in their first nostalgic visit back through the rooms of the house where they’d grown up. Later in the day, after being hailed to great applause with Hillary on the Oprah Winfrey Show, I asked how it felt to be glorified a bit by the great one. I got a classic Mrs. Rodham response – a big-deal shrug, a smirk of a smile, and a roll of the eyes.

One of Dorothy Rodham’s letters to the author.

At the White House Millennium New Year’s Party, I introduced my friend Peter McManus, who’d just completed a round-the-world tour, to “Dorothy” and they chatted amiably about foreign countries. When I later referred to her as Mrs. Rodham, he was shocked. “Hillary’s mother? But she’s like everyone’s mom!” In fact, I saw that maternal nature in action that night when a guest spilled some raspberry sauce on their tuxedo and she fretted until getting her hands on a damp napkin to help. She wrote me with congratulations when I permanently quit smoking and never failed to ask about my old dog. She began one letter by apologizing for writing on yellow legal lined paper, “but I haven’t bought any stationery lately.”

We never lived in the same place at the same time. Mrs. Rodham moved to Washington after Hillary was elected to the Senate, the same month I moved to California. She never ceased to sigh, “I’m so jealous,” often adding, “I really wanted them to move to California after the White House.” What makes this interesting as a reflection on her character is the fact that she’d been put on a train as a young girl, guardian to her younger sister, when both were sent away by their ill-equipped parents to live with their unwelcoming paternal grandparents. Much has been written about her grim youth with them in Alhambra, a Los Angeles suburb, yet while she never avoided that aspect of it when asked, her eyes brightened and her smile broadened when she recalled life in southern California. As she wrote me in 2005: “I grew up in California when it was really the wide open spaces, and I loved it. There wasn’t a morning I didn’t look to the mountains. On the walk to school I would cut through an orange grove. When the trees were in blossom it was intoxicating. Even the freshly turned earth had a fresh, acidic smell.” She was downright rhapsodic when she spoke about the extensive and efficient light-rail system that could take her all over Los Angeles, impervious to my complaints that it was destroyed and never rebuilt.

Seated with the President and Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Rodham (in pink dress) watches her son Tony’s White House Rose garden wedding.

That optimistic core extended to her view of the future of the United States as well, and this older, white, Protestant Midwestern woman felt particular hope after her first wider exposure to people of different backgrounds when she was already well into her 80’s. “After living in Little Rock,” she wrote about her life in the nation’s capital city, “I find the cultural mix and the ethnicity amazing.” She wrote about attending her 1997 grammar and high school reunions: “Anyone who thinks the next generation won’t make it should visit a school like mine. [There are] Twenty-four different languages [and] fifty-four countries [reflected] in the student backgrounds and they have about 60 % going to good colleges, [and] have won more Westinghouse Science awards than anyone. I loved it.”

Vice President Joe Biden jokes with Mrs. Rodham at the January 2009 swearing-in ceremony of her daughter as Secretary of State.

Herself of Native American, French and German ancestry (“Maybe it’s true about being Italian,” she also speculated), a Democrat married to a Republican, a resident of the Midwest, South, West and Northeast, and once a neighbor to a same-sex couple, Dorothy Rodham had a worldly perspective. She listened with full engagement whenever someone was speaking about something she knew nothing about, be it a remote part of the world or a concept, always excited by knowledge. In later years, she took college courses, a fact which her family spoke of with great pride. One late autumn afternoon as we sat in the kitchen of then-Senator Clinton’s home, I told her I was postponing an intended trip to Japan. With amazing recall of the smallest details, she took me on her visit there a decade earlier. The sun was setting but her eyes were shining bright, as she concluded, “There’s nothing like seeing a place with your own eyes that’s always been stuck in your mind.”

Mrs. Rodham with son–in-law and daughter, former President Bill Clinton and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Why write so publicly about a woman who was a private citizen? I can’t help but see the pebble-in-the-lake affect that Mrs. Rodham may have had on millions of people unaware of her. Determining how relatives influence the world view of a political figure and how that official then translates personal values into public policy is perpetually intriguing but ultimately speculative. Parents are often overly credited or blamed for how their children turn out, famous or otherwise. As Hillary Clinton toils on into her fourth year as Secretary of State, perpetually globe-trotting, negotiating treaties, facing down dictators and encountering one new, unrelenting crisis after another, this new “First Lady of the World” retains boundless optimism about the future, stirs with fresh curiosity about unfamiliar cultures, and stands solidly impervious to those hostile to the labels placed on her.

Secretary of State Clinton.

Apart from whatever critique may be made of any foreign policy she has led, Secretary Clinton’s respect for the thousands of individual human beings with whom she engages around the world is unequivocal, regardless of their status. When the full measure of Mrs. Clinton’s humanitarianism is assessed, the touch of Mrs. Rodham’s hand on that of her daughter’s will also be felt.


Categories: First Ladies

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16 replies »

  1. A wonderful, loving and gracious tribute.

    Hope you’re well Carl.

    Best,

    Nick

  2. I’m sure this will be a treasured piece in Hillary’s book of memories. It is a beautiful tribute not only to a semi-famous person, but to a personal friend.

  3. Simply beautiful! Thank you for this wonderful tribute to a remarkable lady.

  4. Terrific Carl. I feel like I was able to know her just a little bit. She was a wonderful human being and in this case (for my money anyway) the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

  5. This is so touching and warm, this woman gave the best of her in an extraordinary human being:HILLARY! Thank you Mrs Rodham, hope you had seen hillary be our first woman president. HILLARY 2012!

    • Although we never discussed this, I would have to say that Mrs. Rodham was surely proud not only of how effective Mrs. Clinton has proven to be in whatever role – elected, appointed, or unofficial – she has undertaken in public life. Thanks for your generous comment.

  6. Thank you for the wonderful tribute to Dorothy Howell Rodham letting us know a little of her story. I am sure you treasure your friendship with her. I would have loved to have known her as well her daughter and son-in-law.

  7. Thank you for this obviously heartfelt tribute to Mrs. Rodham. The more I learn about this remarkable person, the more I understand why the trust, we now place in Secretary of State Clinton, is well founded.

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