Marian Robinson, who is the mother of Former First Lady Michelle Obama, has reportedly died at the age of 86. The news was confirmed by her family in a statement to NBC News on Friday.
Robinson, who raised the former First Lady in Chicago, lived in the Windy City throughout her entire life, never leaving her beloved home.
The Obama Family said in a statement,
“She passed peacefully this morning, and right now, none of us are quite sure how exactly we’ll move on without her.
We needed her. The girls needed her. And she ended up being our rock through it all.
She relished her role as a grandmother. … And although she enforced whatever household rules we’d set for bedtime, watching TV, or eating candy, she made clear that she sided with her ‘grandbabies’ in thinking that their parents were too darn strict.”
Obama Family Statement
The family added,
“Rather than hobnobbing with Oscar winners or Nobel laureates, she preferred spending her time upstairs with a TV tray, in the room outside her bedroom with big windows that looked out at the Washington Monument. The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope.”
Obama Family Statement
She said about her son-in-law Barack Obama as well as Michelle Obama in an interview with CBS News,
“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. That’s what got me to move to D.C.”
Marian Robinson
She was born in Chicago in 1937, and grew up on the South Side. She was known for being extremely close with her granddaughters Sasha and Malia.
Michelle Obama said in a video statement,
“In so many ways she fostered in me a deep sense of confidence in who I was and who I could be by teaching me how to think for myself, how to use my own voice, and how to understand my own worth. I simply wouldn’t be who I am today without my mom.”
Michelle Obama
Rest in peace Marian Robinson.
