LOS ANGELES — Dorothy Howell Rodham, whose daughter
is Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and whose son-in-law Bill
Clinton was president of the United States, died Tuesday morning, the
Clinton family announced. She was 92.
Born in
Chicago on June 4, 1919, Rodham died shortly after midnight in
Washington, surrounded by her family. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton had canceled a trip to London and Istanbul, Turkey, to be with
her mother.
“Her story was a quintessentially
American one, largely because she wrote it herself,” her family said in a
statement emailed to reporters. “She overcame abandonment and hardship
as a young girl to become the remarkable woman she was — a warm,
generous and strong woman; an intellectual; a woman who told a great
joke and always got the joke; an extraordinary friend and, most of all, a
loving wife, mother and grandmother.”
In addition
to her daughter and Bill Clinton, Rodham is survived by her sons and
daughters-in-law, Hugh Rodham and Maria Rodham, and Tony Rodham and
Megan Rodham; her grandchildren Chelsea Clinton and Chelsea’s husband,
Marc Mezvinsky; Zachary Rodham; Fiona Rodham; and Simon Rodham, the
family said.
The family said there will be a
private celebration of her life for family and friends. In lieu of
flowers, the family asked for donations to George Washington Hospital,
where she “received excellent care and made terrific friends over many
years; to the Heifer Project, her Christmas gift of choice in 2010 and
an organization dear to her heart; or to a local organization meaningful
to the giver that helps neglected and mistreated children.”
Dorothy
Rodham was the daughter Chicago firefighter Edwin John Howell Jr. and
Della Murray, who divorced in 1927. The children were sent to live with
paternal grandparents in Alhambra, Calif.. Dorothy graduated from
Alhambra High School in 1937 then moved back to Chicago where, after a
failed reunion with her mother, she worked in offices.
In
1937, she met Hugh Ellsworth Rodham and they married in 1942. They had
three children, Hillary, Hugh and Tony, who were raised in suburban Park
Ridge, Ill.
Hugh Rodham died in 1993.
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