Michelle Obama was just five years old when she first noticed her father using a cane. As she wrote in her 2022 memoir, “The Light We Carry: Overcoming In Uncertain Times” (via CNBC), “Slowly and silently and probably long before he received a formal diagnosis, MS was undermining his body, eating away at his central nervous system and weakening his legs.” Despite that, he never missed a day of work as a pump operator at the city’s water plant. Fraser Robinson III was in his thirties and had a young family to take care of and he rose to the challenge. Speaking with REVOLT in 2022, the former first lady recalled how her dad refused to ever give up. “He could have never worked a day in his life, he could have collected social benefits, he could have succumbed to his disease and been depressed about it, but he didn’t,” she shared. “He never felt sorry for himself, he never expected others to do for him.”
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Indeed, in her 2018 memoir, “Becoming,” Michelle remembered being struck by the progression of her father’s diagnosis, as well as his refusal to complain. “Before I finished elementary school, that cane would become a crutch and soon after that two crutches,” she wrote in an excerpt published by Today. “Whatever was eroding inside my father, withering his muscles and stripping his nerves, he viewed it as his own private challenge, as something to silently withstand.”
