Madelyn Dunham

Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham ( ; October 26, 1922 – November 2, 2008) was an American banker and the maternal grandmother of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. She and her husband Stanley Armour Dunham raised Obama from age ten in their Honolulu apartment. She died on November 2, 2008, two days before her grandson was elected president.

Early life Madelyn Dunham, born Madelyn Lee Payne on October 26, 1922, in Peru, Kansas, In Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, he describes his great-grandparents as "stern Methodist parents who did not believe in drinking, playing cards, or dancing." Dunham moved with her parents to Augusta, Kansas at the age of three. Despite her strict upbringing, she liked to go to Wichita, Kansas to see big band concerts. While in Wichita, she met Stanley Dunham from El Dorado, Kansas, a fact Barack Obama has referred to in speeches. Madelyn Dunham gave birth to their only child, a daughter named Stanley Ann Dunham, who was later known as Ann, at St. Francis Hospital in Wichita on November 29, 1942.

Post-World War II With Madelyn and Stanley Dunham both working full-time, the family moved to Berkeley, California, Ponca City, Oklahoma, Vernon, Texas, El Dorado, Kansas, Seattle, Washington and settled in Mercer Island, Washington, where Ann Dunham graduated from Mercer Island High School. In El Dorado, Madelyn Dunham worked in restaurants and Stanley Dunham had managed a furniture store. In Seattle, she eventually became vice-president of a local bank and Stanley Dunham worked in a bigger furniture store (Standard-Grunbaum Furniture). Mercer Island was then "a rural, idyllic place", quiet, politically conservative and all white. Madelyn and Stanley Dunham attended church at the East Shore Unitarian Church in Bellevue.

Ann Dunham attended the University of Hawaii, and while attending a Russian language class, she met Barack Obama Sr. in 1960, a graduate student from Kenya. Stanley and Madelyn Dunham were unhappy about their daughter's marriage to Obama Sr. in 1961, particularly after receiving a long, angry letter from his father, who "didn't want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman".

Madelyn and Stanley Dunham raised their grandson, Barack Obama from age 10 while his mother and step-father were living in Jakarta, Indonesia, so he could go to school in Hawaii. In fifth grade, Obama was enrolled at the Punahou School, a prestigious preparatory school where his tuition fees were paid with the aid of scholarships. Ann Dunham later came back to Hawaii to pursue graduate studies, but when she returned to Indonesia in 1977 for her master's fieldwork, Obama stayed in the United States with his grandparents. Obama wrote in his memoir Dreams From My Father: "I'd arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they'd leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight". In his book, Obama described Dunham as "quiet yet firm", in contrast to his "boisterous" grandfather. Her colleagues recall her as a "tough boss" who would make you "sink or swim", but who had a "soft spot for those willing to work hard".

Obama said about her during an interview with Diane Sawyer, "She never got a college education but is one of the smartest people I know. ... She's where I get my practical streak. That part of me that's hardheaded, I get from her. She's tough as nails". Obama said his iconic image of his grandmother was seeing her come home from work and trading her business outfit and girdle for a muumuu, some slippers and a drink and a cigarette.

Later years Dunham took care of her daughter in Hawaii in the months before Ann Dunham died in 1995 at age 52.

2008 presidential campaign Dunham was generally not seen in the 2008 presidential campaign. In March 2008, at age 85, she was quoted as saying, "I am not giving any interviews...I am in poor health".

On March 18, 2008, in a speech on race relations in Philadelphia in the wake of controversial videos of Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright surfacing, Obama described his grandmother:

On March 20, 2008, in a radio interview on Philadelphia's WIP, Obama explained this remark by saying:

Obama's use of the phrase "typical white person" was highlighted by a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and subsequently picked up by commentators on other media outlets. In a CNN interview, when Larry King asked him to clarify the "typical white person" remark, Obama said:

Quote|Well, what I meant really was that some of the fears of street crime and some of the stereotypes that go along with that were responses that I think many people feel. She's not extraordinary in that regard. She is somebody that I love as much as anybody. I mean, she has literally helped to raise me. But those are fears that are embedded in our culture, and embedded in our society, and even within our own families, even within a family like mine that is diverse. Her brother, Charlie Payne, told the Associated Press that his sister's reaction to being made a campaign issue was "no more than just sort of raised eyebrows".

In April 2008, Madelyn Dunham appeared briefly in her first campaign ad for her grandson, saying that Obama had "a lot of depth, and a broadness of view".

In a September 10, 2008, interview on Late Show with David Letterman, Obama described his grandmother as follows:

On October 20, 2008, the Obama campaign announced that he would suspend campaign events on October 23 and 24 to spend some time with Dunham. His communications director told reporters that she had fallen ill in the preceding weeks, and that while she was released from the hospital the week before, her health had deteriorated "to the point where her situation is very serious". In an October 23, 2008, interview with CBS News, Obama said, "She has really been the rock of the family, the foundation of the family. Whatever strength, discipline – that – that I have – it comes from her".

Death

Dunham died at her home on November 2, 2008, at the age of 86. At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on November 3, Obama said, "She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America. They're not famous. Their names are not in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard. They aren't seeking the limelight. All they try to do is just do the right thing". Dunham's absentee ballot, received by the election office on October 27, was included in Hawaii's total. On December 23, 2008, after a private memorial service at the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, then President-elect Obama and his sister scattered their grandmother's ashes in the ocean at Lanai Lookout. It was the same spot where they had scattered their mother's ashes in 1995.

Ancestry

Madelyn Payne Dunham's heritage consists mostly of English ancestors, and smaller amounts of Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and German ancestors, who settled in the American colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries. Her most recent native European ancestor was her great-great grandfather, Robert Perry, who was born in Anglesey, Wales in 1786 and whose father, Henry Perry, first settled Radnor, Ohio in 1803. Robert Perry's wife, Sarah Hoskins, was also born in Wales and immigrated to Delaware County, Ohio as a young child.

According to the family's oral tradition, her mother had some Cherokee ancestors, although researchers have found no concrete evidence of this .