Ex-White House chief of staff Ron Klain said he flew home to Indiana and back every Sunday for months to be with his ill mother

• Ex-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain worked six days a week at the White House, he told the New Yorker.
• During the past couple of months, Sundays were reserved for visiting his ailing mom.

During the past two months, Ron Klain left his work as White House chief of staff in Washington, DC, one day each week to be with his ailing mother, who lives in Indiana.

Klain, 61, mentioned this logistical feat and example of devotion as an aside during an interview with Evan Osnos for the New Yorker, while explaining why he decided to leave the Biden White House after two years.

"These past couple months, also, my mother's been ill, and I've been working here six days a week and flying home to Indiana every Sunday morning and staying there till late Sunday night," he told Osnos. "And so that also kind of weighs on me."

Klain left the White House this month after spending the first two years of the administration leading Biden's team. He's been part of Biden's world on and off for years, starting with him on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986 when Biden served as chairman and later serving as chief of staff to Biden when he was vice president.

Biden spoke of Klain's mother during a chief of staff transition ceremony at the White House, when Klain turned over the reins to Jeff Zients. Klain's mother, Sarann Klain Warner, a retired travel agent, was reportedly too ill to attend.

"Mom, if you can see this or it gets played for you, we love you," Biden said. "We really do. All of us love you, and we're thinking a lot about you. You raised one heck of a son. And you should be so proud. Ron is a credit to you, Mom."

Other examples of Klain's committement to his mother have emerged in news stories over the years.

He grew up in a Jewish community in Indianapolis and never had a Christmas tree. Though he and his wife Monica Medina raised their children Jewish, they agreed that they would celebrate Christmas for her, he told the New York Times in 2007. But they always waited until after his mother's annual December visit to put up the tree, he told the Times.

Jewish Insider also noted that Klain said during a Zoom call with members of his childhood congregation that 2020 was the first year he couldn't attend his mother's Passover Seder.

Klain Warner joined Twitter in 2019. She described herself simply as "Mother of 3 Wonderful Kids, Bub of 9 Wonderful Grandkids."