Virginia McLourin Passed Away!

Virginia McLourin passed away.

In her 113 years of life, Virginia McLourin saw the first Black president, first Black first lady and first Black vice president. She even had an opportunity to meet them.

Virginia had passed away on Wednesday.

McLaurin had been in hospice care for several days, her family wrote on her official Facebook page.

"She lived an incredibly full life and appreciated all the love she received from people on this FB page and everywhere she went. (Before the pandemic that is -- for the past few years she largely stayed inside.)," the post said.

McLaurin was best known for a viral video of her meeting then-President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. In the video, taken over six years ago, McLaurin gleefully breaks into dance as she greets the couple. After someone informs Obama of her age, he asks McLaurin: "So, what's the secret to still dancing at 106?" She then hugs the couple and poses for photos. 

The video has been viewed on the White House Facebook page 70 million times. 

Although she was best known for her White House visit, her loved ones said McLaurin lived a life of service, even as she grew older. 

"As she shared in her interviews with the media following the visit to the White House, she volunteered as a UPO foster grandparent and collaborated with other tenants in the fight for quality living conditions," a GoFundMe for a memorial fund in her name said. "She was a devoted member of her church. During the pandemic, she viewed services regularly via YouTube."

McLaurin was born in Cheraw, South Carolina. According to McLaurin, she "was birthed by a midwife and the birthday put in a Bible somewhere." In her childhood, she worked in the fields with her parents, shucking corn and picking cotton.

She grew up during the Jim Crow era when racial segregation was rampant throughout the Southern United States.

Never receiving an education past third grade, McLaurin got married at 13 and later moved to New Jersey as part of the Great Migration. Widowed when her husband was killed in a bar fight, she moved to Washington D.C. to be closer to her sister in 1939. Around this time she took responsibility for a three-year-old boy after his father had remarried and the new wife did not want to take on the child. McLaurin formally adopted the boy when he was aged 14.

She worked as a seamstress, as a domestic helper for families in Silver Spring, Maryland, and managed a laundry shop.

Through AmeriCorps Seniors, McLaurin has volunteered forty hours per week at Roots Public Charter School since the early 1980s. She joined the United Planning Organization Foster Grandparent Program in October 1994.

In 2013, she received a volunteer community service award from Mayor Vincent C. Gray. After a TV crew publicized the fact that her apartment was infested with bed bugs in 2014, a local pest control company got rid of the infestation and gave her a free bed.

Towards the end of the Obama administration, friends of McLaurin recommended to members of the Obama administration that she meet with the President due to her extensive history of volunteering. In February 2016, the White House hosted McLaurin in celebration of Black History Month. Upon meeting the President and First Lady Michelle Obama, McLaurin gave them both hugs and started dancing with them. She would later say in interviews that she never felt that she would ever live to visit the White House, and she never thought there would ever be a day she would get to meet a Black President with his Black wife while celebrating Black history.

Shortly after her meeting with the Obamas, the video of her dancing with the two went viral online. According to the local press, she has since been referred to as D.C.'s favorite centenarian and Grandma Virginia.

On March 11, 2016, McLaurin received the President's Volunteer Service Award for her two decades of service to schoolchildren. On May 27, 2016, she attended a Washington Nationals baseball game and was presented with a custom jersey on the field.