httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRakrYYtEbs
Video WASHINGTON – Michelle Obama fought back tears on Friday during her last public remarks as first lady, overcome with emotion as she reflected on her eight years in the White House and delivered an intensely personal message of empowerment through education, one of her cherished causes.
“Being your first lady has been the greatest honor of my life,” Mrs. Obama told an audience of educators in the East Room, her voice catching as her eyes shone with tears.
“Our glorious diversity – our diversities of faiths, and colors, and creeds – that is not a threat to who we are; it makes us who we are,” Mrs. Obama said.
On Friday, Mrs. Obama showed glimpses of her oft-expressed impatience to be finished with the fishbowl-like quality of life in the White House.
Her aides, Mrs. Obama said as she thanked them by name, “Have worked miracles without any staff or budget to speak of – which is how we roll in the first lady’s office.”
Her voice began to thicken when Mrs. Obama, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago and was in the first generation of her family to attend college, spoke of her father, part of a discourse on the power of hope to fuel opportunity.
“The hope of folks like my dad, who got up every day to do his job at the city water plant, the hope that one day his kids would go to college and have opportunities he never dreamed of,” Mrs. Obama said.
The audience rose to applaud, and as Mrs. Obama struggled to keep her emotions in check, audience members and attendees who were assembled behind her for the speech wiped away their own tears.