Madelyn Dunham Biography
Madelyn Dunham was born on October 26, 1922, as Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham and November 2, 2008. she was the American 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, Hawaii, apartment, where on November 2, 2008, she died two days before her grandson was elected President.
Dunham moved with her parents to Augusta, Kansas at the age of three. She was an honor roll student and one of the best students at Augusta High School, where she graduated in 1940.
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, and the two married on May 5, 1940, the night of Madelyn’s senior prom. Their daughter, Stanley Ann, was born in 1942.stanly is the mother to the former USA president Barrack Obama.
Madelyn Dunham Age
She was born in 1922 In Peru, Kansas, USA but died in 2008. Sources have revealed that she is the immediate maternal grandmother to the former president of the United States, Barrack Obama.
Madelyn Dunham Funeral
Obama learned of her death on Monday morning while he was campaigning in Jacksonville, Florida. He planned to go ahead with campaign appearances. The family said a private ceremony would be held later.
Madelyn Dunham Cause Of Death
On November 3, 2008, in the United States, the Obama campaign announced that Madelyn Dunham had “died peacefully after a battle with cancer” in Hawaii. Obama and his sister Maya Soetoro released a statement saying, “She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility”.
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, 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. Obama was staying at Plantation Estate at the time.
Madelyn Dunham Bank Of Hawaii
The Dunhams then moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where Madelyn Dunham started working at the Bank of Hawaii in 1960 and was promoted to be one of the bank’s first female vice presidents in 1970, while Stanley Dunham worked at a furniture store.
In 1970s Honolulu, both women and the minority white population were routinely the target of discrimination. Obama considered his grandmother “a trailblazer of sorts, the first woman vice-president of a local bank”. 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”. She retired from the Bank of Hawaii in 1986.
Madelyn Dunham Grave
BIRTH; 26 Oct 1922
Peru, Chautauqua County, Kansas, USA
DEATH; 2 Nov 2008 (aged 86)
Honolulu, Honolulu County, Hawaii, USA
BURIAL; National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific
Honolulu, Honolulu County, Hawaii, USA
PLOT; SECTION CT1-BROW 400 SITE 440
MEMORIAL ID; 31108653 · View Source
Barack Obama Madelyn Dunham
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 a 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.
Barack 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.