Park Ridge is the ‘Village’ That Helped Raise Hillary Rodham Clinton

Family, friends, freedom and the community that created the foundation of a female political force.

Hillary Rodham Clinton (from right) in sixth grade in 1958, as a high school senior in 1965 and former first lady, former U.S. senator, and U.S. secretary of state at the 100th Anniversary of the Boundary Waters Treaty in 2009. Clinton went on to become the first woman Democratic presidential nominee in 2016. (Credit from left: Field Elementary School, Eyrie yearbook produced by Maine South High School, and Harry Skull Jr.)  

This is the first story in a two-part series analyzing how Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 1950s-60s upbringing in her hometown of Park Ridge, Illinois, shaped her unprecedented political profile.

While a steady late summer drizzle persists outside, Sue Saccomanno sits inside on a quiet Sunday morning reflecting on the mature, tree-lined neighborhood where she and her husband, Joe, raised their children. They’re grown now, she says. Meanwhile, just down the hall is the lively laughter of Joe Saccomanno playing on the floor with their young grandchildren. 

This is the kind …