Hillary Clinton's mother, 92

WASHINGTON - Dorothy Howell Rodham, 92, mother of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton's mother-in-law, died Tuesday after an illness.

The family said Mrs. Rodham died, surrounded by her family, at a Washington hospital. Hillary Clinton had canceled a planned trip to London and Istanbul to be at her mother's side.

In a statement, the Clinton family hailed Mrs. Rodham as a woman who "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."

President Obama praised Mrs. Rodham as a "remarkable person" who was "strong, determined and gifted."

Dorothy Rodham was a witness to her daughter's political victories and defeats. She avoided the spotlight and rarely gave interviews about herself or her daughter and son-in-law.

A notable exception was Hillary Clinton's 2008 bid for the Democratic nomination for president.

Mrs. Rodham was born in Chicago in 1919, the daughter of a city firefighter. In her autobiography, Living History, Hillary Clinton described her mother's childhood as lonely and loveless.

The Howells shuttled Dorothy and her younger sister, Isabelle, among relatives and schools. She was 8 when her parents divorced, and she was sent with her sister to live with their paternal grandparents in California. Her grandmother could be cruel when not ignoring young Dorothy, Clinton wrote.

Dorothy left her grandparents' home at 14 when she found room and board as a mother's helper to another family. After graduating from high school, she returned to Chicago on her mother's promise of helping to pay for a college education if Dorothy lived with her and her new husband. After that promise was unfulfilled, Dorothy supported herself with a job in an office.

She met Hugh E. Rodham, a native of Scranton, who had found work in Chicago as a traveling salesman. They married in 1942. Besides their daughter, they raised two sons, Hugh and Tony. Dorothy Rodham's husband died in 1993.

The Clinton family plans a private memorial service.