Michelle Obama

by Peter Slevin

  Whatever their frustrations and demons, Michelle’s grandfathers did not appear to be fixated on the injustices of the past. Nor were her parents. Whether because the history was too painful or too much of a distraction or a little of both, the elders did not want their children to feel beaten down by knowledge of the barriers that had halted their own progress. Even Purnell, whom Marian perceived as angry about racism, “did not let it carry over,” she said. “We couldn’t be racially divisive. That wasn’t allowed. We could not be prejudiced.” This was typical for the times. Sterling Stuckey, who graduated from DuSable High School in 1950, had an uncle with an Ivy League degree, from Cornell. Yet the best work his uncle could find in those days was managing a business that sold ice. “An ice house!” Stuckey marveled. “But never did he say something discouraging to the young people in the family. He said, ‘Things will be different for you.’ ”

  “Parents were trying not to burden their children, but to give them hope and keep them moving forward,” said Rachel Swarns, who traced Michelle’s family back to slavery, finding white ancestors and slaves on both sides of the family tree, along with generations of travail. The unspoken message from Fraser and LaVaughn was pragmatic. “We want you to get what you can. We want you to look forward. We don’t want you to look back,” daughter Francesca Gray, who graduated from Simmons College, remembered limiting excavations of the past, the adults created a buffer, a security zone that made it possible for many African American children to grow up in a nurturing, optimistic world even as prejudice persisted up the street or around the corner or a bus ride away. Michelle noticed and later paid homage, praising “the mothers and the fathers who taught their children to stand with dignity during a time when it was hard to get our kids to dream big.”

  THE LESSON WAS FAMILIAR to Deval Patrick, who grew up in an impoverished family on the South Side. “We didn’t think of it as segregation,” he said, “just the neighborhood.” He saw elders who had every reason to surrender to cynicism, yet they told him he could shape his future. Seven years older than Michelle, he endured penury worse than anything faced by the Robinsons, particularly after his father, a baritone saxophonist, split for New York to play with the Sun Ra Arkestra. The day his father stormed away from the family in a rage, four-year-old Deval ran after him. “Go home! Go home!” his father shouted. A block from their apartment, he turned and slapped Deval, knocking him to the ground. “From that position, I watched him walk away,” said Patrick, whose childhood was punctuated by his mother’s stint on welfare, gang threats on his way to DuSable, and summer days wishing his family could afford orange juice. His bright and able grandfather, Reynolds Wintersmith, worked for more than fifty years as a South Shore Bank janitor, sweeping floors and cleaning toilets four blocks from the Robinsons’ house on South Euclid Avenue.

  “I was surrounded by adults who had every reason to curb my dreams,” Patrick said. “My grandparents had grown up with Jim Crow. My mother knew all too well the humiliation of poverty and betrayal.” Yet he and his older sister reached adulthood with “just no sense at all that there were limits on us,” confident that they could chart their own course. “The true gift of my childhood,” he called it. With an unexpected boost from a white South Side teacher who relayed news of a scholarship possibility, Patrick escaped to boarding school at Milton Academy, then earned two degrees from Harvard before being elected the first African American governor of Massachusetts. “They did not want me trapped by bitterness, but liberated to believe that the wider world could be a special place,” Patrick said. It was only much later that he realized how far his family had gone to protect him. His grandmother’s decision to pack food for the family’s monthly visits to Kentucky was not about saving time or money on the road. Rather, it was an attempt to avoid the indignity of stopping at roadside restaurants that refused to serve black customers.

  CRAIG ROBINSON DID NOT REALIZE how little money the family had, or how small their apartment was, until he reached Princeton in 1979. At that point, he concluded that the Robinsons were “poor.” His father had received regular raises at the water plant, and the family kept its expenses down through general frugality and the chance to share the house on South Euclid. When they took a vacation, it was by car. When they went out, it was usually to dinner at a relative’s house. When they went to a drive-in movie, Marian popped the popcorn at home. Desserts were reserved for Sunday dinner and Fraser cut Craig’s hair, saving the expense of a barber. “Lunch on school days was often a sandwich made from leftovers. Going to the circus once a year was a big deal. Getting pizza on Friday was a treat,” Michelle said, noting that pizza was often reserved as a reward for good grades. The purpose of a rare visit to State Street or Michigan Avenue was usually not to shop, but to peer into the windows of bustling stores decorated for Christmas. “If the TV broke and we didn’t have any money to have it fixed, we could go out and buy another one on a charge card,” Marian explained, “as long as we paid the bills on time.”

  One day when Craig was in elementary school and feeling inquisitive about the family finances, he caught up with his father at the kitchen table and asked, “Are we rich?” He told Fraser that it looked as though they were rich, since Marian did not work outside the home and Fraser had a steady city job. When Fraser received his next paycheck, instead of putting it in the bank, he cashed it and brought home a wad of cash, probably about $1,000. When he spread out the bills on the foot of the bed, it was more money in one place than Craig had ever seen. “Wow, we are rich!” he exclaimed. Then Fraser pulled out the family’s bills, for electricity, gas, telephone, rent, and the monthly car payment. He had a stack of envelopes and he placed the matching amount of money in each. He set aside money for groceries and each of the ordinary costs of a typical month. When he was finished, a lone $20 bill remained. Craig said gamely that $20 still seemed like a lot. “You get to keep $20 every time you get paid?” Fraser reminded Craig of the trips to the drive-in and the occasional takeout meal. There was nothing left.

  IN CONTRAST TO his own father, Fraser C. Robinson III channeled great energy into the children he called “Cat” and “Miche” and took very public pride in their doings and accomplishments. He would even make time for them in the mornings after an overnight shift, which ran from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., sometimes fixing their breakfast before he headed to bed. He attended Craig’s games and Michelle’s dance recitals. He spent hours with Craig on neighborhood courts, and shot baskets with him at Dukes Happy Holiday Resort, a rustic getaway in central Michigan where the Robinsons sometimes rented a cabin, and helped him find a principled coach who would teach him well. He took Craig with him to the barbershop, so that his son could hear the talk of the day—advising him, however, not to repeat the bawdy jokes to his mother. He dispensed aphorisms. One favorite was “A smart man learns from his own mistakes; a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” There was something about Fraser that made his children want to live up to his high standards. “If you disappointed my dad, everybody was, like, crying,” reported Craig, who said he did not drink his first beer until a college recruiting trip. “I never had any friends who could talk me into doing something that my parents would be disappointed in. Never. Because it was the ultimate insult to me as a son to disappoint my mom and dad.”

  Friends and relatives universally described Fraser as gregarious and generous, honorable and trusted. “Unofficial counselor to family, friends and strangers all around Chicago,” as Craig once put it. “Fraser was the type of person, whatever he did, he put his all into it. Whatever he did, he did it all the way,” said Grace Hale, Marian’s sister. “The way he thought about his job. The way he went out there every day, determined to make it. The way he insisted that his children would get an education. He always assumed he would make a way for them to get their education. He wanted the best for them and he gave it to them—and he never got to see it.” When Marian’s uncle William Terry’s health failed, Fraser would check on him before leaving for
work and again when he arrived home. He would shave Terry’s whiskers, cut his hair, bathe him, and take him to the toilet. To others in the family, he listened well and was not shy about offering advice. “That’s where I went to talk about my issues in life, wife, children. We would get a bottle of Old Fitz and ginger ale and some beer nuts and sit down and really talk. He taught me a lot,” said Nomenee, who described being dismissed at times by other relatives as a vagabond or, worse, a schemer. “Not that I always made the best decisions, but whatever decisions I made and I wanted to recover from, he wanted the best for me. I always felt that way. He could put things in perspective.”

  A major source of Fraser’s perspective was his debilitating multiple sclerosis. The illness held him back on many fronts, not least in pursuing his passion for painting and sculpture. “Before he got really sick and had to work and raise us, he probably, if he had his choice, would have been an artist,” Michelle said. Multiple sclerosis is unpredictable in whom it afflicts and how seriously. It also is notoriously difficult to diagnose, but by 1965, the year he turned thirty and the family moved to South Shore, it seemed likely that he had the disease. Long before the children knew why he was ill, they saw that he was becoming weaker, walking with a limp and struggling against tremors to button his work uniform. “I never knew my father as a man who could run,” Michelle once told an audience. He walked first with a cane, then with one crutch, the kind with a cuff that wraps around the arm. Then with two and then with a walker. By the time the children were in college, he used a wheelchair and a motorized scooter.

  “Even as a kid, I knew there were plenty of days when he was in pain. And I knew there were plenty of mornings when it was a struggle for him to simply get out of bed,” Michelle told delegates to the 2012 Democratic National Convention. “But every morning I watched my father wake up with a smile, grab his walker, prop himself against the sink, and slowly shave and button his uniform. And when he returned home after a long day’s work, my brother and I would stand at the top of the stairs of our apartment, patiently waiting to greet him, watching as he reached down to lift one leg and then the other to slowly climb his way into our arms.” He took pride in not going to the doctor, Michelle said, and he almost never missed a day of work. By all accounts, he did not complain about yet another bad break in a life afflicted with more than his fair share. Michelle, who often talked about the example her father set, did not volunteer details about how her father’s illness had influenced her, but there were signs in her preference for organization and discipline. “When you have a parent with a disability,” she said, “control and structure become critical habits, just to get through the day.”

  Dan Maxime started work at the water plant in 1970 and remembered Fraser walking with a limp even then. As the years went by, he watched his health decline. “Here’s a guy who could have gone on medical disability,” Maxime said. “Every day, he worked. He was the gutsiest guy I have ever known in my life. He was honest, conscientious, hardworking. Here he had this disability and he never complained about it. A mild-mannered guy. I only heard him cuss once.” It happened one payday, when a co-worker stopped by the plant to pick up his paycheck, then called in sick two hours later when he was due to start his shift. Maxime recalled attending one of Craig’s basketball games, impressed that Craig had addressed him as Mr. Maxime. “We had a lot of laughs. We talked a lot of sports.… Every time there was some kind of accomplishment by Craig or Michelle, he would always tell me. ‘Guess what? Craig made his first dunk today.’ ”

  Nor was he timid about sharing his pride and good feelings with the children themselves. Fraser “thought he had the greatest kids that God ever gave anyone,” Marian told an interviewer. None of it was lost on Craig or Michelle. “To have a family, which we did, who constantly reminded you how smart you were, how good you were, how pleasant it was to be around you, how successful you could be, it’s hard to combat. Our parents gave us a little head start by making us feel confident,” Craig said. “It sounds so corny, but that’s how we grew up.”

  BEFORE MICHELLE was old enough to ride by herself on the trains that rumbled along 71st Street, her bicycle provided an escape. A favorite destination, and the apogee of one of her first solo rides, was Rainbow Beach, a large patch of public sand on the shores of Lake Michigan, an easy pedal from home. Michelle sometimes gathered friends, riding their own bikes, to join her. At a city-run summer camp there, ten-year-old Michelle missed out on the best camper award because of her salty tongue. “I was going through my cursing stage,” she said. “I didn’t realize until my camp counselor at the end came up and said, ‘You know, you would have been best camper in your age group, but you curse so much.’ ” The news floored her. “And I thought I was being cool.”

  The fact that Rainbow Beach could occupy a spot on Michelle’s itinerary in the mid-1970s was a sign of changing times. Barely a dozen years earlier, the stretch of sand and water from 75th Street to 79th Street was contested territory, as more African Americans moved beyond the borders of the traditional Black Belt. White lifeguards and beachgoers made it clear that black people were not welcome, prompting protests. In July 1961, an interracial group of demonstrators, including members of the NAACP Youth Council, staged a “freedom wade-in.” Opponents threw rocks, injuring demonstrators. Although the conflict was history to the South Shore kids of Michelle’s generation, Craig had an encounter in the 1970s that reinforced a sense that the city was making only halting progress. One warm day, he was riding his new bicycle, bought at Goldblatt’s department store, along the lake at Rainbow Beach. A black Chicago police officer ordered him off the bike and accused him of stealing it. Craig protested, to no avail, and the officer drove the boy and the bicycle home. Standing in the front yard, Marian lectured the officer for a good half hour about jumping to conclusions about black children as Craig watched from an upstairs window. She insisted that the officer return the next day and apologize. He did.

  Leonard Jewell Jr., Craig’s friend from the 7600 block of South Euclid, considered bike rides an important part of his South Shore childhood. He recalled the feeling of freedom when he pedaled east toward the lake, away from his block. Yet he, too, had one ride that troubled him for years. It happened when he rode with elementary school friends to South Shore Country Club, home to a nine-hole golf course and private beach. The country club, originally open only to white Protestants, refused to allow Jews or African Americans to join. A white gatekeeper stopped the bike-riding group. “He said, ‘You guys can’t come in here.’ ” Jewell felt sure they were turned away because of their skin color, and he said the hurt was “horrible.” But just as Rainbow Beach had yielded to changing times, so would the club. As whites moved away, membership dwindled and the place was put up for sale. One group of bidders was headed by Muhammad Ali, who lived nearby. In the end, the Chicago Park District purchased the property. In 1992, Michelle and Barack held their wedding reception there.

  AS MICHELLE PROPELLED herself through school, she developed a ferocious work ethic. “Michelle works harder than anyone I know,” Craig once said. “I’d come home from basketball practice and she’d be working. I’d sit down on the couch and watch TV. She’d keep working. When I turned off the TV, she’d still be working.” Although they were two grades apart at Bryn Mawr, they both attended an accelerated learning program at Kennedy-King College, where Michelle took classes in biology and French. Jewell, who joined them there, recalled an engaging day each week away from the neighborhood. While he, too, skipped a grade, he recalled that Michelle and Craig worked harder than he did, a trait that he traced to the ethos that infused the Robinson household. Fraser and Marian, he said, were “strong, strong, strong, like steel.” They honored values that seemed beyond his reach. “Mrs. Robinson, I loved her a lot. I would not want to piss her off, ever. Mr. Robinson, I was really scared of. I was so much of a chameleon back then, I remember my grandmother telling me, ‘You have to have more of a backbone, you have to have character.�
�� And I’m like, ‘What is character?’ ”

  Jewell tumbled through a series of identity crises before becoming a successful Chicago veterinarian. “I set my own schedule when I was in eighth grade. And when I got into high school, I was making my own activities, I was calling the shots. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with Mr. Robinson and he could just look right through me. He was kind of stoic and quiet and tough. I felt like such a phony.” Jewell could not help but notice the contrast in the way the two families lived. “We had so much. My house was like fucking elegance, and they were crammed in this little, tiny, itsy-bitsy space. It was a box. One little cubicle was Michelle’s place and one little cubicle was Craig’s. They had a small living area and this itsy-bitsy kitchen and one little tiny bathroom. They were the most disciplined people I have ever known.”

  Michelle hated to be bad at anything. She “really does hate to lose, and that’s why she’s been so successful,” Craig once said. One of her first pursuits was piano, guided by Aunt Robbie. Craig played, too, on the upright that was parked along a wall in the upstairs apartment, but not nearly as well or as diligently. “She would practice the piano for so long, you’d have to tell her to stop,” her mother said. By the time Michelle was a teenager, she played Broadway show tunes, jazz, and pop songs. To soothe Craig’s nerves before a basketball game, she would play the Peanuts cartoon theme song. At the games themselves, Michelle and Marian were regulars. They loved easy wins, but could not bear suspense. If the game was close and the clock was ticking down, they would turn away or leave the gym.

  The children did not have the only competitive streaks in the family. In 1996, shortly before she turned sixty, Marian competed in the sprints at the Illinois Senior Olympics, running 50 meters in 9.39 seconds and 100 meters in 20.19 seconds. She finished third in her age group in both events. The following year, she turned sixty and ran faster—8.75 in the 50 and 18.34 in the 100—and won both races in the 60-to-64 category. She finished second in both events in 1998. After a fall and an injury, she stopped competing. “If I can’t do it fast, I’m not doing it,” Marian said at age seventy. “You don’t run just to be running. You run to win.”