Clinton Hillary Rodham - Hillary Clinton: American woman of the world

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ALADDIN

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division

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First Aladdin hardcover edition July 2016

Text copyright 2016 by Cheryl Harness

Front jacket photograph copyright 2016 by Getty Images

Back jacket photograph copyright 2016 by Getty Images

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Book designed by Karina Granda

The text of this book was set in Bembo STD.

Library of Congress Control Number 2016936303

ISBN 978-1-4814-6057-6 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-4814-6059-0 (eBook)

For those who struggled for womens full equality

Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world.

Hillary Clinton, 2011

AS A YOUNG GIRL, SHE was a bookworm, a teachers pet, and a tomboy, too. Plenty of people claim a strong dislike for her and her ideas, but she has lots of good, loyal friends. Shes warm and funnyalso steely and disciplined. Shes given to loud, merry laughter, but as a boss, she can be severe. Shes cautious and brave. A generous woman of deep religious faith and a dedicated public servant, and yet shes not above getting angry and yelling at people. Her work is in the public spotlight, but shes famous for wanting her privacy. What are we to make of Hillary Rodham Clinton? Like most people, shes complicated.

Hillary came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In that era of huge social changes, she met Bill Clinton, the future forty-second president. They fell in love, married, and formed one of the most important and controversial political partnerships in US history. Shes been a First Lady, a vocal champion for the worlds women and girls, a US senator, and her nations sixty-seventh secretary of state. Now shes making her second run at the US presidency, the ultimate, historic first for women.

Ambitious, high-energy Hillary describes herself as somebody who gets up every day and says, What am I going to do today, and how am I going to do it?

Her statement reflects her upbringing and iron-willed nature, but you cant fully know Hillary without knowing the words of John Wesley, the eighteenth-century founder of her Methodist faith: Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.

The lesson was tattooed on her heart when she was a Sunday-school girl in Illinois.

October 26, 1947June 9, 1965

I was born an American in the middle of the twentieth century, a fortunate time and place.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History

THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES DIDNT suffer the sort of battles and bombs that wrecked so much of Europe and Asia in World War II. When it ended in 1945, millions of US veterans came home to a powerful America. They were eager to see their families and start ones of their own. The US birthrate was about to explode. Of the nearly four million baby boomers born in 1947, one was tiny Hillary Diane Rodham, first child of Hugh and Dorothy Rodham of Chicago. Baby Hillarys sturdy, pretty mother was born in Chicago too, on June 4, 1919, but her young parents couldnt care for her. Little Dorothy Howell was only eight when her mother put her and her three-year-old sister on a train for a lonely, scary, four-day ride to California to live with their mean, strict grandmother. By the time she was fourteen, Dorothy was on her own, working as a cook, nanny, and housemaid. Luckily, her kind employers helped her finish high school, but college? Impossible. In time, Dorothy found secretarial work and a steady boyfriend, stocky, black-haired Hugh E. Rodham.

Hugh, a fabric salesman of Welsh ancestry, grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Pennsylvania State University. In early 1942, shortly after the United States entered World War II, Hugh and Dorothy were married. He joined the US Navy and served near Chicago, at Naval Station Great Lakes, training sailors for battle. After the war, Hugh started making and selling window shades and curtains. Dorothy helped with the business and had their daughter, on October 26, 1947. She named her Hillary, liking its exotic sound.

Events were happening in young Hillarys world that would shape her life and those of countless others. Black American soldiers, who had helped to win World War II, faced cruel race discrimination when they came home. Thousands of women whod served in uniform or built tanks and bombers in US factories had to leave their jobs to make room for returning servicemen. Now they were expected to devote themselves to their homes, husbands, and children, as Hillarys mother did. And everyone lived in the Cold Wars scary shadow.

After its 1917 revolution, Russia and its neighbor countries became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, aka the USSR or Soviet Union. It was a communist (state owned and controlled) dictatorship. After World War II, the USSR seized control of Eastern Europe and isolated its citizens behind a virtual Iron Curtain between them and the democratic West, including the United States, which waged a long Cold War (a war of nerves rather than guns) to keep Soviet-style Communism from spreading. President Harry Truman went on TV (a White House first) in 1947 to say that the United States would help keep other countries from becoming part of the USSRs communist empire. The United States and the ever-more-powerful USSR competed in the arts and space exploration. They piled up bombs to fight each other, bombs that could destroy the world. Communism scared Americans so badly that they questioned their fellow citizens patriotic loyalty and got into awful wars in Korea and Vietnam before the Cold War finally ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union crumbled.

Hugh Rodham did so well at his business and at saving money that he was able to buy a two-story brick house at 235 North Wisner Street, in Park Ridge, Illinois. Hillarys family moved into this well-to-do Chicago suburb in 1950, when she was three and her younger brother, Hugh Jr. (Hughie), was a baby. Their brother Tony came along in 1954. Hugh and Dorothy took their babies to Scranton to have each of them christened at Hughs boyhood Methodist church. Not far away was a cabin that they visited every summer. Hillary and her little brothers swam in Lake Winola, played pinochle with their grandpa Rodham, and listened to his stories.

At home, four-year-old Hillary loved playing with all the neighborhood kids, but one day a tough little girl shoved her. If she was hit again, said Hillarys mom, she should hit the other girl back. Theres no room in this house for cowards, said Dorothy. She wanted her children to be confident and stand up for themselves. So Hillary minded her mother and came home in glory, puffed up with the other kids respect, including that of the tough girl, Hillarys new friend. It was a strong and lasting lesson.