They grow up so fast! President Barack Obama attended his older daughter Malia’s high school graduation from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., on Friday, June 10, and onlookers said the outgoing president was one proud papa.
“He was just a total dad,” the mother of a fellow graduating senior told the Washington Post. “No fanfare. You didn’t know [the Obamas] were there.”
First lady Michelle Obama, of course, was also on hand to celebrate Malia’s big day, wearing a colorful sleeveless dress and low black heels.
POTUS, 54, wore a gray suit and dark sunglasses that may have hidden any tears. (Earlier this year, he told a group of lunch companions in Detroit that he was “going to cry” at the graduation.)
Malia, 17, donned a white dress for the occasion like the other young women (the young men wore suits) as she and her 126 classmates became high school graduates.
“I’m going to be sitting there with dark glasses, sobbing,” the president told Ellen DeGeneres on her show earlier this year. “She’s one of my best friends. And it’s going to be hard for me not to have her around all the time. But she’s ready to go. You can tell. She’s just a really smart, capable person and she’s ready to make her own way.”
Malia is set to attend Harvard University in the fall of 2017, following in her parents’ footsteps. (Both Barack and Michelle attended law school at the famed institution.) She will be taking a gap year before starting college so as to begin after her father is out of office.
