As the spotlight shines on Usha Chilukuri Vance, wife of Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick JD Vance, her family back in India says she was always meant to climb the highest echelons of success, with a strong sense of self, complete with an illustrious academic background.
In a candid chat with CNN-News18, the Indian-American lawyer’s 70-year-old aunt Sarada, a medical practitioner based in Chennai, fondly remembered the time when Usha’s family comprising her father Radhakrishna and mother Lakshmi would frequently visit her during vacations.
“Usha is my niece. They frequently flew down to Chennai as her parents grew up here. She has always been a voracious reader and engaged in many creative things. She is charming, polite, smart, and firmly rooted in her beliefs. Back in those days, all the children would play together, now they are all grown up and established in their own ways,” said Sarada.
Usha’s great-grandparents trace their roots to Andhra Pradesh’s Vadduru village in Chittoor district. Successive generations of the family moved to Visakhapatnam and Chennai owing to their higher education and job opportunities.
Usha’s father Radhakrishna graduated from IIT Madras before moving to the United States in the late 1970s. Usha was born and raised in San Diego, California. She also has a sister who is a mechanical engineer and is currently working there.
“I wanted her to get introduced to Indian literature so I used to send her books written by Rabindranath Tagore, RK Narayan’s Malgudi Days, mythological books. She loved reading all of them and would ask me to send her more from India,” recalled Sarada.
Academics runs in the family and Usha also followed the same path as she graduated from Yale University, and pursued MPhil from Cambridge University. Usha returned to Yale for a law degree where she met her husband JD Vance.
She last visited Chennai in 2010, while her aunt attended her wedding with Vance in the United States in 2014.
“All of us in the family knew about Vance because they studied together at Yale Law School. Her wedding in Kentucky was a close-knit affair, where the entire family came together. Both Usha and Vance are extremely family-oriented,” Sarada said.
While Sarada is pleasantly surprised by the couple’s entry into the world of politics and now into the race for Vance to become the next US vice president, she remains confident of their win.
“I wish them well and hope to see them soon,” Sarada said, adding that she continues to remain in touch with Usha and her parents through phone calls and text messages.
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