'She Touched a Lot of People'

Supporters looked on as Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Saturday at the National Building Museum that she was dropping out of the Democratic race. (By Brendan Smialowski -- Bloomberg News)

The cost of gas had rendered Theresa Gropelli's one-hour drive to work nearly unaffordable. Husband Dave Gropelli struggled to secure contracts as a drywaller because of the housing slump. Her 70-year-old mother and father, Helen and Donald Bem, had doubled the size of their food garden -- "from a hobby to a necessity," Donald liked to say -- because of escalating grocery prices. Drug violence had become so endemic in Kathy Bem's downtown Altoona neighborhood that she rarely left the house after dark.

One by one, as the campaign season intensified, they turned to Clinton.

"It's already overdue for a woman to get the job, because we need someone with a new perspective," Helen Bem said.

"She knew her stuff, so I never doubted she could do it," Donald Bem said.

"She was so confident, it made you feel like nothing could go wrong under her watch," Kathy Bem said.

The more Kathy followed the campaign, the more attached she felt. Sometimes, while watching clips on the evening news or listening to Clinton give an interview, she recognized pieces of herself in the candidate -- a strong, self-assured woman determined to compete in a realm traditionally reserved for men.

A while back, Kathy had accepted a job as a bread deliverer. The only woman among dozens of men who held the job in the Altoona region, she woke up six days a week at 3 a.m., loaded her truck with heavy trays and spent her morning wheeling bread carts around Altoona. Co-workers bet she wouldn't last seven months.

"They told me," she said, "that a woman would never make it in this kind of demanding, physical work."

Two years later, she's still delivering. Earlier this year, she picked up a second job to pay off some debt. After she spends eight hours lugging bread trays, she takes a two-hour nap before supervising the day-care center at a fancy health club. It was there, watching during her breaks on a television installed in the women's bathroom, that Kathy regularly tracked news from Clinton's campaign.

"I can't even explain it," Kathy said. "But it's like we were going through it together, and I really had a lot at stake."

As she remembered the connection in her sister's living room, Kathy shook her head.

"It's so sad," she said. "I still can't figure out exactly what went wrong."

As the impromptu wake progressed Thursday, all five family members marveled at how quickly Clinton's campaign had derailed: One month a euphoric high after a 10-point win in the Pennsylvania primary, the next a devastating blow after a bad loss in North Carolina and a narrow win in Indiana.

Surrounded by vestiges of Clinton's campaign -- yard signs and old magazines that they would one day throw out -- the two sisters assigned blame for her derailment. Young people had flocked to Obama. Commentators had demeaned Clinton's opinions and appearance because of her gender. Obama had run an "almost perfect" campaign.

Kathy still hopes Clinton might make a political comeback -- maybe for the vice presidency, or another run in four or eight years.

"I'm not ready to say it's over forever," she said.

"I know. It's too depressing," Theresa said. "The thing that scares me is that I'm not sure there's going to be another woman anytime soon. It could be 30 years, 50 years -- maybe not even in my lifetime. That's a problem. That's why we're going to be thinking about Hillary for a long time."