Michelle Obama’s mom, Marian Robinson, dead at 86: ‘We will all miss her’
Marian Robinson, former first lady Michelle Obama’s mother, died on Friday, the family announced in a statement. She was 86.
“She passed peacefully this morning, and right now, none of us are quite sure how exactly we’ll move on without her,” the Obama family said.
Robinson was a fixture at the White House for all eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
During Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, Robinson retired from her job as a bank executive secretary to help care for her granddaughters – Malia and Sasha – who were 10 and 7-years-old at the time.
“She didn’t want anyone else taking care of the kids but her,” Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a former spokeswoman for Michelle Obama, said in 2009. “She wanted to be the one there.”
Robinson’s move into the Executive Residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave after Obama’s inauguration was initially announced as a temporary stay “to help the girls get acclimated” and determine “whether or not she wants to stay in DC permanently.”
“I was worried about my grandkids,” Robinson said in a 2018 interview with CBS, explaining her decision to leave her native Chicago. “That’s what got me to move to DC.”
The “first grandmother” would accompany her granddaughters to school in their Secret Service motorcade and greet them at the White House when they returned in an effort to provide them with a sense of normalcy.
Robinson would often participate in some of the more festive, and child-centric, events at the White House, such as the annual Easter Egg Roll or when trick-or-treaters would descend on the White House driveway on Halloween.
She occasionally accompanied the Obamas on overseas trips, but mostly kept a low-profile.
“The trappings and glamour of the White House were never a great fit for Marian Robinson,” the Obama family statement said, noting that she insisted on doing her own laundry. “‘Just show me how to work the washing machine and I’m good,’ she’d say.”
Of the hundreds of distinguished guests invited to the White House, the only one “she made a point of asking to meet” was Pope Francis, during his September 2015 visit.
“Rather than hobnobbing with Oscar winners or Nobel laureates, she preferred spending her time upstairs with a TV tray,” the Obamas said.
Robinson was a widow and lifelong Chicago resident before her move to the executive mansion.
She returned to the Windy City at the end of her son-in-law’s second term and spent her days “reconnecting with longtime friends, trading wise-cracks, traveling, and enjoying a good glass of wine.”
“We will all miss her greatly, and we wish she were here to offer us some perspective, to mend our heavy hearts with a laugh and a dose of her wisdom,” the family statement read.
“In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life,” the statement added. “And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example.”
