Hillary Clinton describes her mother`s rough childhood
Baku, May 12 (AZERTAC). Clinton remembers her mom ahead of Mother`s Day, telling a crowd in New York that her mother, Dorothy Rodham, grew up in neglect.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quieted a room of nearly 2,300 people on Thursday with a story of her mother`s girlhood struggles, while speaking at a New York Women`s Foundation breakfast in Manhattan.
As a girl, Clinton`s mother, Dorothy Rodham, grew up in a home of neglect and abuse, Clinton said. At 8 years old, Rodham escorted her younger sister to California by train, alone, to reside with their paternal grandparents. She worked as a nanny for money, and excelled at high school, but college was financially impossible.
“When I was old enough to understand, I asked how was it that you didn`t become embittered,” Clinton said. She said, “At critical points in my life, somebody showed me kindness and gave me help.”
Clinton recalled key people her mother had remembered over the years—people who had helped in small but meaningful ways. There was a teacher who bought two cartons of milk each day, one for herself and one for Rodham, after noticing Rodham was unable to buy her own. Then there was a woman who handed over a shirt when Rodham desperately needed clothes.
With Mother`s Day approaching, Clinton said, she had been thinking of her mother, who died in November at 92, but who helped chisel her daughter`s world view.
“We are living in a world of virtual reality, but nothing substitutes for personal relationships. I learned this lesson from my mother,” she said.
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