12 Tragedies That Will Always Haunt The Obama Family

The Obama family is one of the most famous in the United States. Barack Obama made history by becoming the first Black president in the country's history, and his wife, Michelle Obama, has become just as popular through her work as first lady and her subsequent projects. Their children are impressive, too — Malia Obama graduated from Harvard and has already amassed multiple television writing credits, while Sasha Obama began pursuing a high-level degree after graduating from the University of Southern California. 

While the Obamas are certainly accomplished, their path to success wasn't easy – they've faced their fair share of tragedies. Barack and Michelle both had unique struggles while growing up, and they've battled plenty of adversity as adults, too. Malia and Sasha also had their own unique challenges as children given their very unusual circumstances. Suffice it to say, life hasn't been a breeze for the former first family. Take a closer look at 12 tragedies that will always haunt the Obama family.

Barack Obama didn't have a strong relationship with his father while growing up. Barack Obama Sr. met his wife, Ann Dunham, at the University of Hawaii in 1960 and got married shortly after. Dunham soon gave birth to the future president, but unfortunately, he never got to spend much time with his father. After he was born, Barack Jr. and his mother moved to Seattle. In 1964, when he was 2 years old, Barack Sr. left Hawaii to study at Harvard University. Not long after that, he and Dunham divorced.

In the same year that Barack Sr. and Dunham separated, the former moved back to Kenya. Though talented and smart, he struggled to maintain employment, and eventually moved back to the United States. Amid the turmoil, Barack Sr. only visited his son once. Barack Jr. was 10 years old and living in Hawaii at the time, and his father's trip had a lasting effect. "His short visit had a profound impact on my life. My father gave me my first basketball and introduced me to jazz. But for the most part, the visit left me with more questions than it answered, and I knew I would have to figure out how to be a man on my own," the former president shared on Instagram. After that one visit, Barack Sr. only ever contacted his son through letters, and the two never saw each other again.

Michelle Obama's upbringing was much different from her husband's, but it didn't come without struggle. The future first lady grew up in Chicago in a two-parent household with her mother, Marian Robinson, her father, Fraser Robinson, and her brother, Craig Robinson. Michelle had dinner with her immediate family every night and was close with her extended family. But, as noted, her family had its own internal struggle — when Fraser was 30 years old, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic disease that affects the body's ability to function properly. His disease impacted his entire family. "We were starting to understand that Dad's illness left us more vulnerable as a family, less protected," Michelle Obama wrote in her book "The Light We Carry" (via NBC). "In an emergency, it'd be harder for him to leap into action and save us from a fire or an intruder. We were learning that life was not in our control."

Michelle Obama has been very open about how challenging it was to watch her father battle MS, but she also learned a lot from him in spite of his health. "He used to say, 'You fall, you get back up, you carry on,' and he showed me that it was okay to lean on something or someone in order to make it through life," the former first lady shared on Instagram. Fraser didn't live with the disease for long. He died at 55 years old.

Barack Obama has had a stunning transformation from humble beginnings in Hawaii to making history as the first Black president of the United States. Sadly, he didn't have his parents to celebrate most of his great achievements. As noted, Barack did not have much of a relationship with his father growing up, and though he spent much more time with his mother, Ann Dunham, they spent significant time apart while he was growing up, too. Dunham and Barack moved a number of times while he was a kid, including to Indonesia for several years. Dunham wanted her son to have a strong grasp on the English language, though, so she sent him back to the United States to live with her parents, and didn't live with him again until his last year of high school.

Despite being apart, the former president's mother had a strong impact on his life. "My mother, Ann Dunham, was strong, smart, and marched to her own beat. For her, the world offered endless opportunities for moral instruction," Barack Obama wrote on Instagram. "My mother believed that power came not from putting people down but rather through lifting them up. And she was always certain that in the face of injustice and humanity's more primal impulses, logic and progress would always prevail," he said, noting that she instilled in him a strong belief in respect and the importance of civil rights. Unfortunately for Barack, Dunham never got to see his accomplishments in politics because she died of ovarian cancer when he was in his mid-30s.

Barack and Michelle Obama have been together since their first date in 1989. The two went to the Art Institute in Chicago and then to a showing of the movie "Do the Right Thing," and two years later they got engaged. A year later, they were married, and Barack and Michelle were anxious to start a family. It wasn't easy for the couple, though – Michelle Obama tragically lost a pregnancy. "I felt like I failed because I didn't know how common miscarriages were because we don't talk about them. We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we're broken," Michelle said of her miscarriage in an interview with ABC News.

Michelle was 34 years old at the time, and she felt pressure because of her age, knowing it would only become more difficult to conceive and carry children. The couple turned to IVF and conceived their two daughters, Sasha and Malia Obama, but the pain and confusion she felt from the miscarriage has stuck with her. Because of her experience, Michelle has spoken openly in hopes of encouraging others in similar positions. "That's one of the reasons why I think it's important to talk to young mothers about the fact that miscarriages happen and the biological clock is real because egg production is limited — I realized that as I was 34 and 35, and we had to do IVF. I think it's the worst thing we do to each other as women: not share the truth about our bodies and how they work and how they don't work," Michelle said.

As noted, Barack Obama did not spend his entire childhood with his mother. When they were living in Indonesia, his mother, Ann Dunham, wanted him to return to the United States, so she sent him to live with her parents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. While Stanley died a few years before Ann, Barack maintained a close relationship with Madelyn. "She was somebody who was a very humble person and a very plainspoken person. She's one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America who — they're not famous, their names aren't in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard. They look after their families. They sacrifice for their children and their grandchildren. They aren't seeking the limelight. All they try to do is do the right thing," Barack Obama said of his grandmother, per CBS News.

Unfortunately, Madelyn wasn't able to see Barack get elected president, either — she died just hours before election day in 2008. However, Barack did get to see his grandmother one last time before her death. The then-presidential candidate had expressed that he regretted not being with his mother when she died in the mid-90s, and he didn't let himself make that same error with his grandmother. In the weeks leading up to the election, Barack Obama left his campaign for a few days to travel to Hawaii to see Madelyn.

There were many people who did not want to see Barack Obama become president, and they made every effort to delegitimize his campaign. Some even went so far as claiming that he wasn't born in the United States, which would have made him ineligible to run for president. Obama, of course, denied the rumors repeatedly, and his team eventually released a copy of his birth certificate to prove that he was born in the United States.

While the release did appease many people, Obama knew it wouldn't suffice for everyone, and he figured that nothing will. The former president also blamed the media for their part in the conspiracy, reprimanding members for focusing on that instead of the real issues plaguing America. "I know that there's going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest. But I'm speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness," Obama said about the ordeal, as told by the New York Times.

Barack and Michelle Obama and their two children were the first Black family to live in the White House. While it was a sign of progress in the United States, it also came at a price for the president and first lady. Both Barack and Michelle have opened up about the racism they faced while he was in office, with Michelle naming very specific examples and sharing exactly how these words and actions made her feel. "There was the first time I was on a magazine cover — it was a cartoon drawing of me with a huge afro and machine gun. Now, yeah, it was satire, but if I'm really being honest, it knocked me back a bit," Michelle said in a commencement speech, as told by Time.

The magazine cover wasn't the only time the former first lady felt marginalized. "And over the years, folks have used plenty of interesting words to describe me. One said I exhibited 'a little bit of uppity-ism.' Another noted that I was one of my husband's 'cronies of color.' Cable news once charmingly referred to me as 'Obama's Baby Mama.' And all of this used to really get to me. Back in those days, I had a lot of sleepless nights, worrying about what people thought of me," she said.

The year 2021 brought about a lot of loss for the Obama family. In March, Barack Obama shared that his paternal grandmother, Sarah Ogwel Onyango Obama, had died. Sarah was not Barack's biological grandmother, but she raised his father and was instrumental in Barack's understanding of his family and roots. While most of Barack's parents and grandparents weren't around to see him be elected president, Sarah was. "Her essential spirit — strong, proud, hard-working, unimpressed with conventional marks of status and full of common sense and good humor — never changed. We will miss her dearly, but celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life," the former president wrote on Instagram of his grandmother.

Just a couple of months later, the Obama family lost another beloved member — their dog, Bo. As Michelle Obama shared on Instagram, she and Barack got their daughters a dog after promising to do so once they finished the 2008 presidential campaign. Bo, of course, became a White House pet as Barack had won the election, and he became just as important to Barack and Michelle as he was to their daughters. "As a family, we will miss Bo dearly. But we are thankful that he lived such a joyful life full of snuggles, games of fetch, and evenings spent lying on the couch," Michelle said, adding that Bo also flew on Air Force One, attended Easter Egg Rolls at the White House, and even met the pope while he was alive.

Barack and Michelle Obama's lives changed in just about every possible way after Barack was elected president. Through their positions, they met lots of new people, and their net worths also increased substantially, allowing them to maintain some of the relationships they established while living in the White House. This brings us to the tragic story of Barack and Michelle Obama's personal chef, Tafari Campbell. 

While serving as president and first lady, the Obamas met Campbell, who was working as a sous chef at the White House. Their bond lasted longer than Barack's presidential term, and Campbell became their private chef after Barack left office in 2017. Tragically, though, Campbell didn't work for the Obamas forever. In 2023, while visiting Martha's Vineyard, Campbell drowned in a lake. The chef had been paddle boarding and onlookers noticed that he was struggling to stay above the water's surface. His death was later ruled an accident. "When we first met him, he was a talented sous chef at the White House — creative and passionate about food, and its ability to bring people together. In the years that followed, we got to know him as a warm, fun, extraordinarily kind person who made all of our lives a little brighter. He's been part of our lives ever since. Our hearts are broken that he's gone," Barack and Michelle said in a statement after Campbell's death, per the New York Times.

Michelle Obama's stunning transformation from a young girl growing up in Chicago to the first lady of the United States was due, in part, to her close relationship with her mother. After Michelle Obama tragically lost her father following a 20-year battle with multiple sclerosis, Michelle's mother, Marian Robinson became her rock. Michelle admired her mother, a woman who stayed home to raise her children, taught them to read, and volunteered at their school. Marian was supportive of both her children, and even moved into the White House after Barack Obama was elected president to be there for her daughter and granddaughters. But as Barack and Michelle shared in a statement, Marian was just as down-to-earth while living at the White House as she was while living in Chicago. "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 presidential couple wrote (via Medium). Even when Marian moved back to Chicago after Michelle Obama left the White House, their relationship never changed. 

Sadly, in 2024, Marian Robinson died at 86. "We will all miss her greatly, and we wish she were here to offer us some perspective, to mend our heavy hearts with a laugh and a dose of her wisdom ... In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life. And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example," the family said of Robinson after her death.

Barack Obama has faced many stressful times in his life, but as the former president shared, nothing has been as terrifying as when his youngest daughter, Sasha Obama, was sick as an infant. When Sasha was just three months old, she had meningitis. "I still remember going to the hospital together and they had to give her a spinal tap," Barack said of the chilling time in his daughter's life, per Politico. "Your world narrows to this very small point. There's one thing you care about and you don't care about anything else."

Michelle Obama has spoken about her daughter's illness, too, recounting how suddenly symptoms onset and how she did everything she could think of to soothe her daughter before bringing her to the doctor. "If we had waited overnight, if we had postponed acting, there's no telling what the outcome would've been," Michelle said, per NBC News.

The teenage years are nerve-wracking for every parent, but Barack and Michelle Obama faced very unique challenges with their two daughters as they grew up in the White House. The family had to contend with all the regular stressors of adolescence along with the added pressure of billions of people around the world monitoring their actions.

On an episode of the podcast "Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce," Michelle shared that raising her daughters was particularly stressful when they were learning to drive. She and Barack wanted Sasha and Malia Obama to be prepared for life as adults, but that was no easy feat when they had full security details and were driven everywhere in armored vehicles. One of the scariest moments came when Sasha was learning to drive. "One time Sasha got T-boned, literally her car totaled. Some lady T-boned her. And you get this call that Sasha was in an accident, the car was totaled," Michelle said, adding that she hoped that the lady who hit Sasha was okay, too.