Hillary Rodham Clinton and her mother, Dorothy Rodham, at a hotel in New York in 1992. Credit Ron Frehm/Associated Press
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In just over a minute of a long campaign launch event speech on Saturday, Hillary Rodham Clinton described how individual acts of kindness from people who matter (a teacher, an employer) helped her mother survive devastating family dysfunction and become a mother who could believe in her. Here are her words:
My mother taught me that everybody needs a chance and a champion. She knew what it was like not to have either one.
Her own parents abandoned her, and by 14 she was out on her own, working as a housemaid. Years later, when I was old enough to understand, I asked what kept her going.
You know what her answer was? Something very simple: Kindness from someone who believed she mattered.
The 1st grade teacher who saw she had nothing to eat at lunch and, without embarrassing her, brought extra food to share.
The woman whose house she cleaned letting her go to high school so long as her work got done. That was a bargain she leapt to accept.
And, because some people believed in her, she believed in me.
For more on Mrs. Rodham’s life and the impact of her childhood adversity on Hillary Clinton’s policies, read Clinton Embraces Her Mother’s Emotional Tale by Amy Chozick in the New York Times.
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