Michelle Obama (8 page)

Craig came away from the game a lot more interested in Barack, who in his own quiet way showed a stronger character than Craig had expected. His parents soon felt the same way. "My sister is one tough girl," Craig remembered. "I'm older and I'm still afraid of her. She's very accomplished, so she needs someone as accomplished as her, and she also needs someone who can stand up to her. So, we in the family, we were just hoping that she could hang on to this guy, because it was readily apparent he could stand up to her."

Barack knew how to get through to Michelle. Some of their dates were unconventional, like when he took her to church basements for community meetings he had organized. But he was able to show off a side of himself that he knew she'd admire. "He connected with me and everyone in that church basement," she remembered. "He was able to articulate a vision that resonated with people, that was real. And right then and there, I decided this guy was special. The authenticity you see is real, and that's why I fell in love with him." Although she was focused on earning a living, she admired Barack's lack of interest in money. "He could've gone to Wall Street. Those offers were available to him. But instead Barack bussed these young mothers down to City Hall to help them find their voice and advocate for change." She also loved his ability to stay hopeful that his work was worth it. "He talked about the simple notion that we as Americans understand the world as it is—and it is a world sometimes that is disappointing and unfair—but our job as American citizens is to work toward building the world as it should be."

Barack also understood a different side of her than anyone else did—even her family. He wrote in
The Audacity of Hope,
"There was a glimmer that danced across her round, dark eyes whenever I looked at her, the slightest hint of uncertainty, as if, deep inside, she knew how fragile things really were, and that if she ever let go, even for a moment, all her plans might quickly unravel."

She needed someone who saw past the tough exterior to that part of her. Barack was the first. Much later, Craig, who might have known her better than anyone, said he was surprised by that insight.

But at the end of the summer, Barack had to return to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for his second year of Harvard Law School. Could the relationship survive the distance? There would be another year after that before he was finished. For him, a long-distance relationship would be something new.

He knew Michelle was worth it, and the relationship lasted. But these two strong personalities had different ideas about where it was leading. Michelle recalled to
New Yorker
reporter Lauren Collins, "We would have this running debate throughout our relationship about whether marriage was necessary. It was sort of a bone of contention, because I was, like, 'Look, buddy, I'm not one of these who'll just hang out forever.' You know, that's just not who I am." But Barack wasn't easily pushed, Michelle remembered. He'd say, "'Marriage, it doesn't mean anything, it's really how you feel.' And I was, like, 'Yeah, right.'"

They dated for three years. Michelle had just about had enough when Barack took her out to a dinner at a luxurious restaurant in Chicago. It was supposed to be a celebration of his passing the bar exam, so he could practice law in Illinois. Naturally, the question came up: Law school's done, so now what? He was a little vague, and toward the end of the meal he began to repeat all the same old arguments against marriage. "He got me into one of these discussions again," she remembered. She was "fired up," and he was "blah blah blah blah" with his ideas that a piece of paper didn't make a difference.

That was it. She'd waited long enough for him to come around. But just as she was about to tell him, she was interrupted by the waiter: "Dessert comes out, the tray comes out, and there's a ring!"

The were married in October 1992. The wedding was almost as Michelle had always imagined it, and it was almost a perfect day. Almost. Someone she'd always thought would be there, maybe the person she counted on the most, wasn't there. As happy as she was on her wedding day, a loss had already begun to change her life in ways would that shock some of the people who knew her best.

In 1991, about a year and a half before Michelle and Barack were married, Michelle's father died. He was just fifty-five years old. He'd had surgery for a kidney operation, and there were complications.

Michelle was shattered. Although she had worried about his health for as long as she could remember, she wasn't prepared for his sudden death at such a young age.

In his memoir
The Audacity of Hope,
Barack recalled flying back to Chicago for the funeral and holding Michelle as the casket was lowered. Right then, he made a silent promise to Fraser to take care of Michelle.

She would need his help. She had already been shaken the year before by the death of one of her closest friends, who had died of cancer at just twenty-five.

Suzanne Alele had been a classmate at Princeton, where she'd arrived after a childhood as varied as Barack's: Born in Nigeria, raised in Jamaica and then Washington, D.C., she was both an athelete and a computer geek. She was less serious than Michelle, and she often told Michelle to relax about the future and enjoy herself more. Although her example hadn't been enough to draw Michelle off the academic path, Michelle was tempted.

Michelle was at Alele's bedside when her friend passed away. The experience caused Michelle to think about her friend's attitude toward life, and how it differed from her own. She asked herself, "If I died in four months, is this how I would have wanted to spend this time? I started thinking about the fact that I went to some of the best schools in the country and I have no idea what I want[ed] to do." She suddenly understood that her pursuit of excellence at Princeton and Harvard had narrowed her life, not widened it. She explained to reporter Richard Wolffe, "You can make money and have a nice degree. But what are you learning about giving back to the world, and finding your passion and letting that guide you, as opposed to the school you got into?"

She was about to walk away from certain success. A senior lawyer at her law firm later said that if she had stayed with the firm "she would have been a superstar." But, Michelle recalled, "I looked out at my neighborhood and sort of had an epiphany that I had to bring my skills to bear in the place that made me," she later told the
New York Times.
"I wanted to have a career motivated by passion and not just money."

The problem was, money makes a difference when you owe a lot of it, and Michelle did. The student loans from Princeton and Harvard weighed heavily on her. But worrying too much about money also felt wrong to her. As she put it years later, she didn't want to roll up to the family reunion in a Mercedes-Benz.

Barack's influence tipped the balance. He has never been as practical as Michelle, so it was easy for him to tell her to follow her heart. Money? He didn't notice it when he had it. His car at the time had a rust hole on the passenger side that was so big Michelle could see the street go by. Later, when he was a state senator, he would put government expenses on personal credit cards and forget to ask for repayment.

Michelle's family, however, wasn't so casual. Her father was still alive at the time, and he asked, "Don't you want to pay your student loans?" Her college roommate Angela Acree could barely believe what Michelle was planning to do. "I'm sure at Sidley she made more money than her parents ever made," Acree recalled. "It just seemed incredible at the time that she'd leave."

But along with pushing Michelle toward academic success, her parents had taught her to do what would make her happy. She was following that advice.

She was also following the example of people who'd helped create opportunities for her, like the activists who had pushed Chicago in the 1960s from the era of "Willis Wagon" portable classrooms to high schools like Whitney M. Young. She told Mary Mitchell of the
Chicago Sun-Times,
"I did exactly what leaders in my community told me to do. They said do your best in school, work hard, study, get into the best schools you can get into and when you do that, baby, you bring that education back and you work in your communities."

Michelle wrote to several charities and government agencies. One letter was passed along to Valerie Jarrett, deputy chief of staff to Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley.

The mayor was the son of the Richard J. Daley, who had run the city's Democratic political machine during Michelle's childhood. Michelle didn't have good memories of that. Her father's experiences as a precinct captain had made the whole family suspicious of politicians. The first Daley had fought to keep African Americans in small neighborhoods and poor schools.

But Michelle went to an interview with Jarrett anyway. They liked each other instantly. Instead of lasting for a polite fifteen minutes, the interview went on for an hour and a half. They learned about each other. Jarrett's background and experience were fascinating. She was born in Iran, where her American father, a doctor, was running a children's hospital. As a child she lived in London before the family moved back to Chicago. Her father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all broke barriers for African Americans. Jarrett had become a lawyer and then ahd devoted herself to public service. Michelle could see that Jarrett didn't believe in old-style Chicago politics.

Jarrett could also see that Michelle would be a huge help to the city. "I offered her a job at the end of the interview," Jarrett remembered, "which was totally inappropriate since it was the mayor's decision. She was so confident and committed and extremely open."

Michelle didn't accept right away. Because Barack shared her doubts about city hall, she asked Jarrett to meet with Barack. Jarrett convinced him. In fact, she later became one of his closest advisers.

Michelle was put in charge of simplifying and solving any problems that businesses and citizens were having with city hall. There was a lot less money than she'd been earning at Sidley, but there was more satisfaction. She then became assistant commissioner of planning and development. That job let her focus on solving the problems with Chicago neighborhoods that had led to conflict in the city when she was growing up.

About a year and a half after joining the mayor's office, Michelle got another opportunity. A charity called Public Allies, which had been founded the year before in Washington, D.C., had chosen Chicago as the location of its second office. (It now has almost twenty.) With a combination of volunteer work and education, Public Allies develops young people who want to become community service leaders. The Washington staff had heard of Barack's reputation as a community organizer and wanted him to run the Chicago office. He told them the person they really needed was Michelle. They were soon happy he did.

Paul Schmitz, chief executive officer of Public Allies, remembered, "At a time when the average age of our staff was twenty-three, she was like drafting Brett Favre for the Packers," Schmitz told Jay Newton-Small of TIME. "Michelle was twenty-nine when we hired her. She had a law degree from Harvard, had worked for the mayor, for a corporate law firm. Comparatively, I'd worked a telemarketing group. Frankly, we were surprised that she wanted to do it."

Michelle recalled that it was a leap of faith. "It sounded risky and just out there," she told Richard Wolffe. "But for some reason it just spoke to me. This was the first time I said, 'This is what I say I care about. Right here. And I will have to run it.'" She got a new title, executive director, and another pay cut.

It didn't take long for Michelle to stamp the office with her personal style. Vanessa Kirsch, a founder of Public Allies, remembered, "She had incredibly high expectations and was constantly asking questions, making sure we were using her time well. There were days when, even though she worked for me, I definitely felt like I worked for her."

Nothing was done halfway. Barbara Pace-Moody, another community leader in Chicago, told reporter Lauren Collins she recalled meeting Michelle around this time when they were both volunteering for a program to mentor young women, before Michelle and Barack were married: "We had a big gala, and she and her sister-in-law took their own money and paid for the girls to get their hair done and set them up in a hotel downtown. I remember thinking, Who is this Michelle Robinson?"

Michelle was tough enough to work in Cabrini-Green, a notorious housing project that some Chicago police officers refused to enter. She became the authority the young volunteers needed: "She let nothing slide," remembered José A. Rico, an illegal immigrant who had a fantasy about opening a high school for Latinos. Thanks in part to her help, he became a citizen, helped start a high school, and became its principal. She also helped many of the young people through their first close relationships with people of different backgrounds. Being the boss, she was able to do that in her own way, which didn't emphasize being nice or politically correct. "Real change," she explained to the
New York Times,
"comes from having enough comfort to be really honest and say something very uncomfortable."

Michelle stayed at Public Allies for four years. The Chicago office became the strongest in the country.
Michelle had built a board of advisers who could carry it into the future and raised funds so successfully that she left behind enough money to run the office for a year. A dozen years later, no other director has matched that. As Public Allies's Paul Schmitz said, "She built it to last."

Her own future, however, had become much less certain. While she was at Public Allies, Barack was frustrated by his own career. Although he was at a law firm that handled a lot of community service work, his cases hadn't led to the sweeping changes he hoped to achieve. He had decided it wasn't enough to ask judges to interpret the law his way. He wanted to write the laws in the first place. That meant he had to run for political office.