🚀 go-pugleaf

Barack Obama's grandmother dies
Death of Madelyn Dunham, 86, announced day before election

updated 21 minutes ago

HONOLULU - A day before the presidential election, Barack Obama
announced the death Monday of his grandmother, who helped raise him
and whom he praised as the cornerstone of his family.

Madelyn Payne Dunham died peacefully Sunday night after a battle with
cancer, Obama said. She was 86.

Obama announced the news in a joint statement with his sister Maya
Soetoro-Ng. 

"She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary
accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who
encouraged and allowed us to take chances," the statement said. "She
was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this
world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful
and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure. "

Obama last saw her on Oct. 23-24 when he took a break from campaigning
and flew home to visit her. He said the decision to go to Hawaii was
easy to make, telling CBS that he "got there too late" when his mother
died of ovarian cancer in 1995 at 53, and wanted to make sure "that I
don't make the same mistake twice."

The candidate learned of the death of his grandmother, whom he
affectionately called "Toot," Monday morning while campaigning in
Jacksonville, Fla. He planned to go ahead with campaign appearances.

The family said a private ceremony would be held later.

'White grandmother'
The Kansas-born Dunham and her husband, Stanley, raised their grandson
for several years so he could attend school in Honolulu while their
daughter and her second husband lived overseas. Her influence on
Obama's manner and the way he viewed the world was substantial, the
candidate himself told millions watching him accept his party's
nomination in Denver in August.

"She's the one who taught me about hard work," he said. "She's the one
who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I
could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me."

Obama's nickname for his grandmother was "Toot," a version of the
Hawaiian word for grandmother, tutu. Many of his speeches describe her
working on a bomber assembly line during World War II.

Madelyn and Stanley Dunham married in 1940, a few weeks before she
graduated from high school. Their daughter, Stanley Ann, was born in
1942. After several moves to and from California, Texas, Washington
and Kansas, Stanley Dunham's job landed the family in Hawaii.

It was there that Stanley Ann later met and fell in love with Obama's
father, a Kenyan named Barack Hussein Obama Sr. They had met in
Russian class at the University of Hawaii. Their son was born in
August 1961, but the marriage didn't last long. She later married an
Indonesian, Lolo Soetoro, another university student she met in
Hawaii.

Obama moved to Indonesia with his mother and stepfather at age 6. But
in 1971, her mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents.
He stayed with the Dunhams until he graduated from high school in
1979. 

Fond memories
In his autobiography, Obama wrote fondly of playing basketball on a
court below his grandparents' 10th-floor Honolulu apartment, and
looking up to see his grandmother watching.

It was the same apartment Obama visited on annual holiday trips to
Hawaii, a weekling vacation from his campaign in August, and his
pre-election visit in October. Family members said his grandmother
could not travel because of her health.

Madelyn Dunham, who took university classes but to her chagrin never
earned a degree, nonetheless rose from a secretarial job at the Bank
of Hawaii to become one of the state's first female bank vice
presidents. 

"Every morning, she woke up at 5 a.m. and changed from the frowsy
muu-muus she wore around the apartment into a tailored suit and
high-heeled pumps," Obama wrote.

After her health took a turn for the worse, her brother said on Oct.
21 that she had already lived long enough to see her "Barry" achieve
what she'd wanted for him.

"I think she thinks she was important in raising a fine young man,"
Charles Payne, 83, said in a brief telephone interview from his
Chicago home. "I doubt if it would occur to her that he would go this
far this fast. But she's enjoyed watching it."

Stanley Dunham died in 1992, while Obama's mother died in 1995. His
father is also deceased.

Racial divide
When Obama was young, he and his grandmother toured the United States
by Greyhound bus, stopping at the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park,
Disneyland and Chicago, where Obama would years later settle.

It was an incident during his teenage years that became one of Obama's
most vivid memories of Toot. She had been aggressively panhandled by a
man and she wanted her husband to take her to work. When Obama asked
why, his grandfather said Madelyn Dunham was bothered because the
panhandler was black.

The words hit the biracial Obama "like a fist in my stomach," he wrote
later. He was sure his grandparents loved him deeply. "And yet," he
added, "I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could
still inspire their rawest fears."

Obama referred to the incident again when he addressed race in a
speech in March during a controversy over his former pastor, the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright. "I can no more disown him than I can my white
grandmother," he said.

Dunham was "a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this
world but who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on
the street." 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27522679/?GT1=43001