relaxed
Examples of these strong nurturers and strong female influences include the following First Mothers:
1. Leslie Lynch King Ford fled an abusive husband in the darkness of night with her 16-day-old son wrapped in a blanket in her arms. Her child would grow up to become Gerald R. Ford, taking the name of his stepfather, a kinder parental influence.
2. Lillian Gordy Carter (better known as Jimmy Carter's mother "Miss Lillian") never went back to the local Baptist church after her first meeting with the church’s women’s group because they were enthusiastic about sending missionaries to Africa but were not interested in helping the African-American people in their community. Her son lists her as his strongest influence when it came to shaping his character, and he even devoted an entire book to her, entitled A Remarkable Mother.
3. Virginia Cassidy Clinton learned that her husband had been killed in an automobile accident when she was 6-months pregnant with the future president, Bill Clinton.
4. Ida Stover Eisenhower was a pacifist and passed out anti-war pamphlets during World War II, while her son General (and future President) Dwight David Eisenhower was in charge of the allied invasion of Normandy.
5. Rebekah Baines Johnson forced her son, future President Lyndon Baines Johnson, to take violin and dancing lessons.
6. Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro, according to her daughter Maya, was an agnostic, and according to her son President Barack Obama, was a "secular humanist" who exposed her children to all of the major pieces of spiritual literature like the Bible, the Hindu Upanishads and the Buddhist scripture.
Following is an interview with author Doug Wead, author of the book The Raising of a President: The Mothers and Fathers of Our Nations Leaders. The lack of professionalism of the Fox news reporters in this interview is an embarrassment for them, but I've included the interview here because Wead himself gives a very interesting interview even if those interviewing him fail to appreciate it.
I hope that this is a Happy Mothers Day for everyone today.