Secretary Clinton was born in Chicago, Illinois on October 26, 1947 to Dorothy Rodham and the late Hugh Rodham. Hillary Clinton's paternal grandfather Hugh Rodham was born in 1879 in Northumberland, England and immigrated to Pennsylvania to work at the Scranton Lace Company. Her maternal great-grandparents, the Howells, were immigrants from England and settled in California. Her maternal grandmother, Della Murray migrated from Canada to Illinois and married secondly to Max Rosenberg who was born in Russia in 1901.
As a young woman, Hillary Rodham worked as a babysitter both after school and during her vacation breaks, sometimes watching the children of migrant Mexicans brought to the Chicago area for itinerant work. She applied to NASA and was stunned when she was told that girls were not accepted for the astronaut program. Although she was active in young Republican groups and campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964, she was inspired to work in some form of public service after hearing a speech in Chicago by Reverend Martin Luther King. She worked at various jobs during her summers as a college student, once in a canning factory in Alaska, in 1969. In 1970, she secured a grant and first went to work for the Children's Defense Fund. The following summer, she first came to Washington, D.C. working on Senator Walter Mondale's (Minnesota Democrat) subcommittee on migrant workers, researching migrant problems in housing, sanitation, health and education. In the summer of 1972, she worked in the western states for the Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's campaign. During her second year in law school, Hillary Clinton volunteered at Yale's Child Study Center, learning about new research on early childhood brain development, as well as New Haven Hospital, where she took on cases of child abuse and the city Legal Services, providing free legal service to the poor. Upon graduation from law school, she served as staff attorney for the Children’s Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the spring of 1974, she returned to Washington as a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives during the Watergate Scandal. After the Nixon resignation in August of 1974, she became a faculty member of the University of Arkansas Law School, located in Fayetteville, where her Yale Law School classmate and boyfriend Bill Clinton was teaching as well.
That same year, she entered Yale Law School and served on the board of editors for the Yale Law Review and Social Action, a quarterly student-run publication. At Yale, Hillary Rodham met Bill Clinton. Following graduation, he returned home to Arkansas to pursue a career in politics; Hillary stayed in Massachusetts to work as an attorney for the Children's Defense Fund . She also served as one of only two female attorneys to the congressional committee that investigated the possibility of impeaching President Richard Nixon
In 1992 and 1996, Bill Clinton made successful bids for the presidency. In the White House, "Hillary Clinton quickly established herself as the most powerful and controversial first lady in history," writes Linda Feldmann in the Christian Science Monitor [source: CSM]. She doggedly pursued a campaign to provide universal health coverage for all Americans, serving as ambassador for the proposal, visiting lawmakers in an attempt to get members of the House and Senate on board. Despite her best efforts, writes the Associated Press' Beth Fouhy, the plan proved to be "an audacious effort that collapsed under its own complexity, Republican opposition and the Clintons' unwillingness to seek compromise with lawmakers.
"There has never been a candidate like Hillary Clinton before. She is the first ever 'former First Lady' to run to President herself. Armed with considerable intellectual & political skills and a proven Senate track record, she is considered by many to be the front running Democratic candidate early in the 2008 Presidential election campaign.
Clinton is the author of "Living History" (2003), "It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us" (1996), "An Invitation to the White House: At Home With History" (2000) and "Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets" (1998). She won a GRAMMY® Award in 1997 for Best Spoken Word Recording for the audio version of "It Takes a Village"
During her time in Congress, Clinton has served on several committees. She's been a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee; the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works; the Senate Committee on Health, Labor, and Pensions; and the Senate Special Committee on Aging [source: Clinton.Senate].
She introduced 377 bills between Jan. 22, 2001, and Aug. 11, 2008. Of these, 323 died in committee, earning her a rating of "extremely poor" relative to her peers. Ten of these bills were enacted into law ("very good"), and she has also co-sponsored 1,858 bills ("average") [source: GovTrack].
In the Senate, Clinton has voted along Democrat Party lines 97.2 percent of the time. She missed 206 votes (32.3 percent) cast in the 110th Congress
The First Lady loves art, and she has said that sculpture is one of her favorite art forms. In fact, her first date with President Clinton was in the sculpture garden at Yale University. As First Lady, Mrs. Clinton has worked with the Committee for the Preservation of the White House and the White House Historical Association to bring exhibits of contemporary American sculpture to the White House. In establishing these exhibits, the First Lady wanted to showcase the best of American sculpture, in America’s home, making it accessible to the thousands of people who visit the White House every day.
The current installation in the series, “Twentieth Century American Sculpture at the White House,” is subtitled “The View from Denver.” This exhibit features a diverse group of twelve works from public collections in Denver, Colorado. To the left is Robert Mangold's "Windsong III," one of the twelve pieces currently on display.
Like her predecessors, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton brings to the role of First Lady of the United States her own special talents, experience, and interests.
Was the first First Lady in US history to seek and win a political office, while still being First Lady.
Is the first female U.S. Senator from the state of New York.
Fresh out of the White House, Hillary Clinton became a senator for New York
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