Hillary Clinton's Mom Dorothy Rodham Dies At 92

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's mother, Dorothy Howell Rodham, 92, died shortly after midnight on Tuesday in Washington with her daughter and other family at her side. Clinton had cancelled a scheduled trip overseas to be with her mother toward the end.

"Her story was a quintessentially American one, largely because she wrote it herself," the Clinton family said in a statement. "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."

Though Rodham stayed out of the spotlight as much as she could during her daughter and son-in-law's political careers, Clinton credited her mother, a homemaker, as her "inspiration," someone who "[gave] her the tools — and toughness — to enter politics," said The Washington Post's obituary of Rodham.

During Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, she identified one person as the reason behind her success. "My mother, who never got a chance to go to college, who had a very difficult childhood, but who gave me a belief that I could do whatever I set my mind," she said.