WASHINGTON — On election night 2008, as Barack Obama sat nervously in a Chicago hotel suite awaiting news on whether he would become the nation’s first black president, his mother-in-law was at his side.
“Are you ready for this, Grandma?” Obama asked Marian Shields Robinson, who years earlier had doubted whether he and her daughter, Michelle, would last.
Six months, maximum, she had predicted.
“Never one to over-emotion, my mother just looked at him sideways and shrugged, which made them both smile,” Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir, “Becoming.” ‘But later she described to me how overwhelmed she had felt at that moment, just as I had been struck by his vulnerability. America had come to see Barack as confident and powerful, but my mother also recognized the gravity of the transition, the loneliness of the task ahead.”
She continued, “The next time I looked over, I saw her and Barack holding hands.”
The union of Barack and Michelle Obama, the twentysomethings who met one summer while working at a law firm in Chicago, endured and made history. In her own way, so would Mrs. Robinson.
She died peacefully on Friday, the former first lady and her brother, Craig Robinson, and their families said in a statement.
“There was and will be only one Marian Robinson,” they said. “In our grief, we are lifted by the extraordinary gift of her life. And we will spend the rest of our money trying to live up to her example.”
In addition to being the mother of the nation’s first black first lady, Mrs. Robinson was also unusual in that she was one of the few in-laws to live with the president and his immediate family in the White House.
Until January 2009, Mrs. Robinson had lived in Chicago her entire life. Widowed and in her early 70s when Obama was elected in 2008, she opposed the idea of starting over in Washington. President Obama said the family proposed trying Washington for three months before deciding. The first lady enlisted her brother to convince their mother to move.
“There were many good and valid reasons that Michelle put forward to me, not least the opportunity to spend time with my granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, and help give them a sense of normality that will benefit both of them. is a priority. of their parents, as it has been since Barack began his political career,” Ms. Robinson wrote in the foreword to “A Game of Character,” a memoir by her son, the former head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.
“My feeling, though, was that I could visit occasionally without actually moving in and still be there for the girls,” she said.
Mrs. Robinson said her son understood why she wanted to stay in Chicago, yet used reasoning about her that she would also use about him and his sister. He asked her to view the move as an opportunity to grow and try something new.
“As a compromise, I have chosen to move to the White House, at least temporarily, while still allocating significant time to travel and maintaining a degree of autonomy,” she wrote.
Granddaughters Malia and Sasha were just 10 and 7 respectively when they started calling the executive mansion home in 2009 after their father became president. In Chicago, Mrs. Robinson had become almost a surrogate parent for them during the presidential campaign. She quit her job as a bank secretary to help them travel.
At the White House, she was a reassuring presence, and her lack of Secret Service protection allowed her to accompany them to and from school every day without fuss.
“I would not be who I am today without the steady hand and unconditional love of my mother, Marian Shields Robinson,” Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir. “She has always been my rock, giving me the freedom to be who I am without my feet getting too far off the ground. Her boundless love for my girls and her willingness to put our needs above hers gave me the comfort and confidence to go out into the world knowing they were safe and cherished at home.
Her life in the White House was not limited to caring for her granddaughters.
Mrs. Robinson enjoyed a level of anonymity openly envied by the president and first lady, allowing her to come and go as often as she pleased from the White House on shopping trips around town, to the presidential box at the Kennedy Center and to Vegas. or to visit her other grandchildren in Portland, Oregon. She gave a few media interviews, but never to the White House press.
She attended several White House events, including concerts, the annual Easter Egg Roll and the National Christmas Tree Lighting, and was a guest at several state dinners.
The White House residence also opened the world to Mrs. Robinson, who had been a widow for nearly 20 years when she moved to a room on the third floor, one floor above the first family.
She had never traveled outside the US until she moved to Washington and took her first flight abroad on Air Force One in 2009 when the Obamas visited France. Later that year, she joined them on a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana, where she met Pope Benedict, visited Rome’s ancient Colosseum and toured a former slave farm on the African coast.
She also accompanied her daughter and granddaughters on two foreign trips without the president to South Africa and Botswana in 2011, and China in 2014.
Craig Robinson wrote that he and his parents doubted whether his sister’s relationship with Obama would last, although Fraser Robinson III and his wife felt the young lawyer was a worthy suitor for their daughter, also a lawyer. Craig Robinson and his parents were sitting on the porch of their Chicago home on a warm summer evening when Obama and his sister passed by on their way to a movie.
Her parents exchanged knowing looks as soon as the couple left. “Too bad,” said Mrs. Robinson. “Yes,” replied Fraser Robinson. “She’ll eat him alive.”
Craig Robinson wrote that his mother gave the relationship six months. Barack and Michelle Obama married on October 3, 1992 and have been married for 31 years.
Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born in Chicago on July 30, 1937. She attended school for two years, married in 1960 and, as a stay-at-home mother, emphasized the importance of education for her children. Both were educated at Ivy League schools, each receiving a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. Michelle Obama also has a law degree from Harvard.
Fraser Robinson was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department. He had multiple sclerosis and died in 1991.
In addition to the Obama family, Mrs. Robinson is survived by her son Craig, his wife Kelly and their children Avery, Austin, Aaron and Leslie.