Michelle Obama’s mother makes rare public appearance in London

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/16/michelle-obama-mother-rare-public-appearance-london

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Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, made a rare public appearance when she flew to London with her daughter this week.

The first lady usually tries to keep the 78-year-old first grandmother out of the public eye. Robinson keeps a low profile and rarely gives interviews, saying she prefers to concentrate on looking after her family.

But she is a vital part of the Obama support network. The retired bank secretary moved into the White House when her son-in-law won the presidency in 2008 to help Malia, now 16, and Sasha, now 14, with the transition. She’s the first live-in grandma since Eisenhower’s mother-in-law Elivera Doud in the 1960s.

Robinson was said to be reluctant to leave her modest bungalow, siblings and friends in Chicago, where she had lived all her life. She told CBS in 2009: “They’re dragging me with them, and I’m not comfortable with that. But I’m doing exactly what you do. You do what needs to be done.”

Her grand apartment with a four-poster bed, walk-in closet and separate sitting room on the third floor of the presidential home is a world away from the house she shared with her father, a house painter, her mother, a nurse, and her six siblings as she grew up in Chicago’s South Side.

She married Fraser Robinson, a Chicago water department employee, in 1960 and they lived together until he died from multiple sclerosis in 1991.

As Malia and Sasha have grown into teenagers, Robinson – or Mrs R, as she is said to be called around Washington – has embraced life in DC and enjoys spending time with friends such as Bill Clinton’s former personal secretary Betty Currie.

Staying away from the limelight means she is rarely recognised. In an interview in 2009, Barack Obama said she “just walks out the gate and goes over to CVS and starts doing her shopping”.