Marian Robinson, the mother of former first lady Michelle Obama, has passed away at the age of 86, her family announced Friday.
Mrs. Robinson’s death was announced by Michelle Obama and other family members in a statement that said “there was and will be only one Marian Robinson. In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life.”
“She passed peacefully this morning, and right now, none of us are quite sure how exactly we’ll move on without her,” the statement read.
She was a widow and lifelong Chicago resident when she moved to the executive mansion in 2009 to help care for granddaughters Malia and Sasha. In her early 70s, Mrs. Robinson initially resisted the idea of starting over in Washington, and Michelle Obama had to enlist her brother, Craig, to help persuade their mother to move.
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“We needed her,” the family’s statement read Friday. “The girls needed her. And she ended up being our rock through it all.”
In a 2018 interview with “CBS Mornings” alongside her daughter, she described the move as a “huge adjustment,” but felt she needed to do it to help care for her granddaughters, Sasha and Malia Obama.
“I felt like this was going to be a very hard life for both of them, and I … was worried about their safety. And I was worried about my grandkids,” Robinson told “CBS Mornings.”
“In the end, I’ll do whatever,” she told reporters at the time. “I might fuss a little, but I’ll be there.”
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However, Michelle Obama said her mother quickly became a “beloved figure” in the White House.
“She had a stream of people,” Obama said back in 2018. “The butlers, the housekeepers. They would all stop by … Grandma’s room was like the confessional. You know, everyone would go there and just unload, you know? And then they’d leave. People still visit with mom in Chicago.”
Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born July 29, 1937, in Chicago. Her father, Purnell Shields, had moved to Chicago from Alabama in the 1920s to escape the Jim Crow South. Her mother, Rebecca Jumper, was a nursing aide. As a young woman, Marian “fell quickly and madly in love with Fraser Robinson, another South Sider with a boxer’s strength and jazz lover’s cool,” the family said.
She married Fraser Robinson III in 1960 and trained as a teacher before working as a secretary. Robinson largely stayed out of the limelight while the Obama’s were in the White House, electing to stay to herself instead of rubbing shoulders with the swaths of notable public figures who would visit the residence, according to the statement, which noted she only ever made a point of asking to meet the Pope. She played a large role in taking care of her granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, during the Obama administration.
To her daughter, she had been a model of support. In her memoir, “Becoming,” Michelle Obama wrote that she had wanted to be a career woman and a “perfect” mother, as her own had been.
“I had so much — an education, a healthy sense of self, a deep arsenal of ambition,” she wrote. “And I was wise enough to credit my mother, in particular, with instilling it in me.”
In a heartfelt Instagram post, Mrs. Obama penned this tribute:
“My mom Marian Robinson was my rock, always there for whatever I needed. She was the same steady backstop for our entire family, and we are heartbroken to share she passed away today. We wanted to offer some reflections on her remarkable life…”
Those reflections included quotes from Robinson:
“Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
“Know what’s truly precious.”
“As a parent you’re not raising babies, you’re raising little people.”
“Don’t worry about whether anybody else likes you. Come home. We always like you here.”
On Saturday, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden said in a statement that Robinson was a “devoted mother and grandmother with a fierce and unconditional love of her family.”
“With the blessing of friendship, we felt that love ourselves – with every quiet smile or warm embrace she shared with us,” the Bidens said. “She believed, like we do, that family is the beginning, middle and end. She moved into the White House to be there for her family when they needed her the most, and in so doing, she served her country right alongside them. Her life is a reminder that we are a great nation because we are a good people.”
Robinson, who is the first mother-in-law in years to live in the White House after Obama became president in 2008, according to The Washington Post, is survived by her children and six grandchildren.
