Bill Clinton Is a Mama's Boy

May 12, 2006 — -- Former President Clinton is a mama's boy.

"Absolutely," Clinton said. "And I still think about my mother all of the time."

Statistics show that fatherless boys are often part of what's wrong with society, but in honor of Mother's Day, Bill Weir, a product of a single mother, sat down with a former U.S. president, a senator, a football star, and a best-selling author who all owe their success to mom.

"My mother was the one constant in my life," said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. "When I think about my mom raising me alone when she was 20, and working and paying the bills, and, you know, trying to pursue your own dreams, I think is a feat that is unmatched."

Clinton has the same admiration for the sacrifices his mother made.

"She went back to nursing school so that she could earn an income to support me," Clinton said. "She had no way of knowing she'd remarry or if so, when. And she had to leave me with her parents, which was agonizing for her. One of my earliest memories is, she knelt by the railroad track and cried when I left, pulled out of the station to go back home to Arkansas."

Best-selling author J.R. Moehringer remembers the lies that his mother told to protect him.

"When we were living on food stamps and I found food stamps in her purse, she told me they were coupons because she didn't want me going to school thinking we were living on food stamps," he said. "I really love her for that lie."

Like many boys being raised by their mom, young Moehringer felt protective of his mother when she dated.

"Some of the guys I liked and some of them I didn't, and I would greet them at the door like the man of the house, you know, with a metaphorical baseball bat, and I'd grill 'em," Moehringer said. "But I do wonder sometimes, if I hadn't been around, if she might have found happiness with those guys, and it, and it makes me worry, you know."

Moehringer's mom never remarried so he found surrogate fathers bellied up to the bar where his uncle worked, good-natured souls that fill his memoir.

Football star Warrick Dunn learned manhood on the streets and from his coaches. Obama's mother brought home the best kind of stepfather.

"He taught me how to play chess and fly a kite and how to box. He never tried to make the relationship into something that it wasn't."

A teenaged Clinton lived the other extreme, forced to protect his mother from her violently alcoholic second husband.

"I did feel like the man of the house when he was in trouble, and especially after my brother was born, I realized that I had some obligation to take care of him and keep order and when I got big enough to keep peace," Clinton said.

Bonds are forged in those dark hours, and for a son, all the better to understand the feminine mystique.

"I learned more what women like to talk about and gossip about," Dunn said. "My mom was my best friend so we talked about a lot of girl things and we could talk about relationships. We talked about girls that I was dating and she, she had her opinion and majority of the time, she was right."

"I think you do have more reverence for women than some of your buddies, but you also do expect more from the women that you're with," Moehringer said.

Clinton said his mother taught him that even when times were difficult, you had an obligation to enjoy your life.

"She had this amazing attitude in the face of everything, including when she got cancer," Clinton said.

Obama's mother also died of cancer before she could see his career ascend.

"She said, you know, 'I'm not leaving you a lot of money. You don't have a fancy title or a big house, but I gave you an interesting life,'" Obama said. "And, and she was right. That was a great gift."

Betty Smothers never saw her son, Dunn, play professional football. When Dunn was 18, she was gunned down by a robber while working a second job as a security guard.

"I guess she was preparing me for this day, if she never came back. She was preparing me for all the years of making sure that I was taking care of business around the house, being man of the house," Dunn said. "And part of me left, part of me is gone forever."

Moehringer's mother is still alive, and she was there to read her son's poignant picture of their life in his memoir.

"They were tears of pride and love, you know," Moehringer said. "I think she was proud of the way I'd used words, but I also think she felt very appreciated. You know part of being loved is being seen."

Even the mothers who are no longer seen are still present.

"I have pictures up of her all over my house, my office," Clinton said. "She's still present with me."

ABC's Bill Weir reported this story for "Good Morning America."