The L.A. 'village' that raised Hillary Clinton's mother

The older girl, Dorothy Howell, now 88, is best known as Dorothy Rodham -- the mother of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York senator and Democratic presidential candidate.

The struggles that marked young Dorothy's life constitute a little-known Southern California tale, more than seven decades old.

And if it is true that, as Clinton has argued, it takes a village to raise a child, it is no stretch to say that the mother of the woman who wants to be president was raised by the city of Alhambra.

Today a low-profile, mostly Asian and Latino suburb of more than 87,000 people, Alhambra, along with nearby San Gabriel, provided a home -- though not always a happy one -- for Dorothy Howell from the ages of 8 to 18. The stories she would tell her daughter about those difficult times in Depression-era Los Angeles County would help inspire Clinton's interest in public service.

"Learning about my mother's childhood sparked my strong conviction that every child deserves a chance to live up to her God-given potential and that we should never quit on any child," Clinton wrote in the 2006 edition of her book "It Takes a Village."

A broken home

Dorothy Howell was born in 1919 to Edwin Howell Jr., a fireman in his early 20s, and his bride, Della. The 1920 U.S. census records the couple and their infant as living as boarders in a house with four other families on a tough stretch of Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

The couple fought. In 1926, Dorothy's father filed for divorce, claiming that his wife had hit him in the face and scratched him on three separate occasions, according to Cook County records. In a March 1927 court hearing, Della Howell's own sister accused her of abusing her husband and abandoning her two daughters.

"She had a violent temper and flew at him in a rage, and would fight him," testified the sister, Frances Czeslawski.

Della Howell did not show up to contest the divorce -- she could not be found by subpoena servers. Dorothy's father was given custody. But, either unwilling or unable to take care of his daughters, he put them on the train to California, where his parents, Edwin Howell Sr. and Emma Howell, had moved a few years previously.

The Howells occupied a small rented home at 320 E. Park St. in Alhambra, next to land that is now Almansor Park. Friends say that when Clinton's mother speaks of her years in Alhambra, she recalls fondly the smell of orange groves and the streetcar that ran down Main Street near her alma mater, Alhambra High.

The grandparents were ill-prepared to raise Dorothy and her sister, Isabelle.

Edwin Howell Sr. had emigrated from Wales. He worked as a machinist in an auto plant and as a laborer for the Alhambra street department, according to Alhambra city directories from the time. He mostly left the girls' care to his wife.

Emma Howell was a strict woman who wore black Victorian dresses and discouraged visitors and parties. Once, discovering that Dorothy had gone trick-or-treating on Halloween, she ordered her confined to her room for a year except for school.

"Her grandmother was a severe and arbitrary disciplinarian who berated her constantly, and her grandfather all but ignored her," Clinton wrote.

Dorothy Howell gives few interviews and did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article.

In 1932, the Howells bought a home on North Burton Avenue, in what is now Temple City, though it is hardly clear they prospered. Cook County court records from 1936, filed on behalf of Dorothy's mother, suggest that by then Dorothy's grandparents had "no independent means or income, and that they are subsisting on assistance given them by relief agencies."

Leaving at 14