Marie Therese “Toye” Chassaing was the mother of Mireille and her seven siblings. The family lived in Turgeau, Port-au-Prince. In Haiti she was a housewife who also gave sewing and cooking lessons; when her daughter Sandra contracted polio she travelled with her to Cuba for treatment.
After emigrating to the United States she worked as a seamstress, including for the Famous Miss Lowe and later for the Haitian-American designer Norma Kamali in New York. Like Serge, she was cremated at her death rather than buried.
Her mother was Marguerite Valcin and her father Leroy Chassaing.
