Marian Robinson, the mother of former US First Lady Michelle Obama, has died at 86.
In a statement, her family said that Robinson had died “peacefully” on Friday morning.
Robinson was a well-known fixture at the White House during the eight years of Barack Obama’s administration between 2009-17.
She spent much of that time taking care of her two granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, daughters to Michelle and Barack Obama.
In a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, Mrs. Obama called her mother her “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,” she wrote.
In a separate tweet, Mr. Obama said that “there was and will be only one Marian Robinson”.
“In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life,” he added. “And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example.”
No further details were given about the cause of death.
Born in 1937, Robinson raised one of seven children in Chicago, the city where she spent much of her life, before agreeing to come to Washington DC after Mr. Obama’s electoral victory.
Early in her life, she studied to become a teacher before working as a secretary. She raised Michelle and her other child, Craig, together with her husband Frasier Robinson on Chicago’s South Side.
“At every step, as our families went down paths none of us could have predicted, she remained our refuge from the storm,” the Obama statement said.
Robinson – whom Mr. Obama once called “the least pretentious person” he knew – said that it was a “huge adjustment” to have her needs met by White House staff.
“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 family statement said.
“The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope,” it added.
Her privacy afforded her a freedom envied by the rest of her family. David Axelrod, a senior Obama advisor, told CNN on Friday “she would often slip out of the White House on her own and visit with friends”.
“She really wasn’t looking for attention,” he added.
On Mother’s Day – just weeks before Robinson’s death – Mrs. Obama announced that an exhibit at the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago would be named in her honor.
“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 to think for myself,” Mrs. Obama said in a video announcement.
“I simply wouldn’t be who I am today without my mom.”
SOURCE: ghananewsguide.com