Dorothy Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s Mother, Dies at 92

Dorothy Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s mother, died today after an illness.

Hillary canceled a trip to London and Turkey on Monday after her mother fell ill. According to a release from the Clinton Foundation, Dorothy died shortly after midnight in Washington surrounded by her family. She was 92.

The statement described Dorothy Rodham as “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.”

Dorothy was the last remaining parent of Hillary and Bill Clinton and the last grandparent for Chelsea Clinton. The family did not elaborate on the illness.

The statement from the Clinton Foundation reads:

“Dorothy Howell Rodham was born in Chicago on June 4, 1919 and died shortly after midnight on November 1, 2011 in Washington, D.C., surrounded by her family. Her story was a quintessentially American one, largely because she wrote it herself. She overcame abandonment and hardship as a young girl to become the remarkable woman she was…”

The Daily Mail reports that Dorothy Rodham was born into a dysfunctional family in Chicago. When she was 8-years-old, she moved to California to live with her grandparents, but her situation there wasn’t much better.

In Hillary Clinton’s autobiography, “Living History,” she writes:

“I thought often of my own mother’s neglect and mistreatment at the hands of her parents and grandparents, and how other caring adults filled the emotional void to help her… I’m still amazed at how my mother emerged from her lonely early life as such an affectionate and level-headed woman.”

The Clinton Foundation is asking for people to make a donation in Dorothy’s memory to George Washington Hospital, or to the Heifer Project, in lieu of sending flowers.