Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama’s mother and the linchpin of the Obama family who moved into the White House and provided a stable home for her two granddaughters while the young family adjusted to Washington, died Friday in Chicago. She was 86 years old.
Her death was announced in a statement by Mrs. Obama, former President Barack Obama and other family members. No cause of death was released.
Growing up on Chicago’s South Side, Robinson was known as a down-to-earth matriarch who was a source of support to her daughter and granddaughters Malia and Sasha, as well as President Obama.
When Obama became the first black man to be elected president in November 2008, he watched the results come in with his mother-in-law, holding hands as they watched their family’s future change.
But Mrs. Robinson remained much the same: “If you just teach me how to use the washing machine, I’ll be fine,” she said after they moved into the White House, the Obamas recalled in a statement.
Mrs. Robinson was never satisfied with the White House’s amenities, preferring to have her dinner on a tray in a third-floor suite with a television. “The only guest she ever bothered to see was the Pope,” a family member said.
In addition to Mrs. Obama, Mrs. Robinson is survived by her son Craig and six grandchildren. Her husband, Fraser Robinson III, died in 1991.
Mrs. Robinson’s move to Washington in January 2009 was initially said to be temporary to help her daughter and granddaughters settle in. At the time, she was hesitant to commit herself to life within the White House bubble, but despite her resistance, she revealed the determination and sense of humor she tried to instill in her children.
“At the end of the day, I’m up for anything,” she told reporters at the time. “I might make a little noise, but I’m there.”
Robinson spent most of Obama’s eight years in office in a White House suite, continuing the work she began during Obama’s first campaign: making sure her granddaughters had a bedtime, ran baths and were on time for school. She settled in, attending events at the Kennedy Center, inviting friends from Chicago and occasionally hiring babysitters to watch her daughters.
“Our girls needed her,” the family statement read, “and she was our rock through it all.”
To her daughter, she was a supportive role model: In her memoir, “Becoming,” Mrs. Obama wrote that she wanted to be both a career woman and a “perfect” mother, just like her daughter had been.
“I had so much: an education, a healthy sense of self, and a deep reservoir of ambition,” she writes, “and was especially wise enough to thank my mother for instilling it in me.”
Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born in Chicago on July 29, 1937. Her father, Pernell Shields, had immigrated to Chicago from Alabama to escape the Jim Crow South in the 1920s. Her mother, Rebecca Jumper, was a nursing assistant. As a young woman, Marian “fell instantly and passionately in love with fellow Southerner Fraser Robinson, who had the strength of a boxer and the cool of a jazz lover,” her family said.
The Robinsons were married in 1960. Craig Robinson was born in 1962 and Michelle in 1964.
The Robinson family raised their children in a second-floor apartment on Euclid Street on the South Side, rotating between living with relatives, including a piano-teacher great-aunt who lived in a first-floor apartment.
Mrs. Obama said her mother, brother and other family members shielded her from much of the civil rights protests that rocked Chicago and the nation in the late 1960s. Instead, she grew up hearing the clatter of piano keys echoing from downstairs.
When Mrs. Obama was in elementary school, Mrs. Robinson asked to have her daughter placed in a third-grade honors class, an outreach effort that Mrs. Obama says changed her life.
As the Robinson children grew up, they say, she supported them when Craig “decided to leave a high-paying job in finance to pursue his dream of becoming a basketball coach” and when “Michelle married a man who was crazy enough to become a politician.”
After Mr. Obama won the election in November 2008, Mrs. Robinson was with him when his daughters and granddaughters rushed upstairs to see the White House residence for the first time.
Anita McBride, a former chief of staff to former first lady Laura Bush, said the Bushes’ daughters, Barbara and Jenna, have invited the Obamas to tour their new home.
Ms. McBride recalled in an interview that Mrs. Robinson was quiet while the White House chief usher greeted the family, but if she was nervous she showed no signs of it.
“She went on this adventure with her daughter and granddaughters,” McBride said, “and it’s a reminder that no matter how lofty it may seem, no matter how unattainable it may seem, anyone can live there and build a family life and a family home.”
Michael Levenson Contributed report.
