Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, died on Friday at the age of 86, her family said in a statement.
“She passed away peacefully this morning, and now none of us are quite sure how to survive without her.” The Obama family.
Robinson was a constant presence in the White House throughout President Barack Obama’s eight-year term.
During Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, Robinson left her job as a bank executive assistant to help look after his granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, who were 10 and 7 at the time.
“She didn’t want anyone else to take care of her kids but herself,” Michelle Obama’s former spokeswoman Katie McCormick Lelyveld said in 2009. “She wanted to be there.”
Ms. Robinson’s move to the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue after President Obama’s inauguration was initially announced as a temporary stay “to help her daughters adjust” and “to determine whether Ms. Robinson wanted to remain in Washington permanently.”
“I was worried about my grandchildren,” Robinson said in 2018. Interview with CBS“That’s what prompted me to move to Washington, D.C.”
The “first grandmother” tried to give her granddaughters a sense of normalcy, driving them to school in a Secret Service motorcade and welcoming them to the White House when they returned home.
Robinson is the host of the annual White House Easter Egg Roll Or when trick-or-treating kids gather in the White House driveway on Halloween.
She occasionally accompanied the Obamas on overseas trips but mostly kept a low profile.
“The glitz and glamour of the White House was never a good fit for Marian Robinson,” the Obama family statement said, noting that she insisted on doing her own laundry. “‘Just show me how to use the washing machine and I’ll be fine,’ she would say.”
Of the hundreds of celebrities invited to the White House, the only one she “went out of her way to meet” was Pope Francis, during his visit in September 2015.
“She preferred to spend her time upstairs watching TV rather than mingling with Oscar winners and Nobel Prize winners,” the Obamas said.
Before moving into the Presidential residence, Robinson was a widow and a lifelong resident of Chicago.
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, sharing jokes, traveling, and enjoying good wine.”
“We will all miss her greatly and wish she were here to give us some perspective and heal our heavy hearts with her laughter and wisdom,” the family statement read.
“Even in our grief, we are inspired by the incredible gift of her life,” the statement added. “We will spend the rest of our lives striving to follow her example.”
