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vms
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« on: November 03, 2008, 04:46:18 PM »

Obama's grandmother dies of cancer in Hawaii
Mon Nov 3, 2008 4:40pm EST 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's grandmother died of cancer, he said in a statement on Monday, a little more than a week after Obama interrupted the White House race to say goodbye to her in Hawaii.

"It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer," Obama said 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."

Dunham helped raise Obama from the age of 10 while his mother was working in Indonesia, and Obama took an emotional 22-hour trip to Hawaii to visit her on October 23 and 24.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4A26GV20081103?sp=true
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jjayinthemorning
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« Reply #1 on: November 03, 2008, 07:30:22 PM »

why does this remind me of Johnny Fairplay?
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« Reply #2 on: November 03, 2008, 08:18:20 PM »

why does this remind me of Johnny Fairplay?

because you lack any decency maybe?






bless her. shame she couldn't be there to see her grandson elected.
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WhiskeyGirl
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« Reply #3 on: November 03, 2008, 08:29:44 PM »

why does this remind me of Johnny Fairplay?

because you lack any decency maybe?






bless her. shame she couldn't be there to see her grandson elected.

I think Madelyn Dunham has the best seat in the house.

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WhiskeyGirl
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« Reply #4 on: November 03, 2008, 10:57:39 PM »

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Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann also issued a statement: “The people of the City and County of Honolulu join me in expressing our condolences to Senator Barack Obama, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and their ohana on the passing of their grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. I know Ms. Dunham was a tremendous influence on Senator Obama’s life and not only shaped his growth but his character, integrity, and devotion to serving others. Hers is an amazing legacy of love, sacrifice, and aloha, and I know she’ll be missed deeply by all whose lives she touched over these many years. It’s sad beyond words that she won’t be here to celebrate her grandson’s finest hour, or to see how the child she helped raise has galvanized a nation with his message of hope and change. Gail and I offer our prayers to the senator and the family.”

Many in Hawaii who knew her said Dunham said she was a successful businesswoman with a strong work ethic. She was the first female vice president at Hawaii's largest bank, the Bank of Hawaii, where she created the escrow department. She was well known and respected in Hawaii's banking community.

http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?d5bb1deb-9c2f-473e-91de-http://0814a99a5b51
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« Reply #5 on: November 03, 2008, 11:01:18 PM »

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He returned from Indonesia to live with his grandparents when he was 10, and Dunham enrolled him in the exclusive Punahou school in Hawaii. Obama recalled the sacrifices she made to send him to that school, in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination: "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."

Friends had described Dunham, who was originally from Kansas, as an example of strength and determination. She worked her way up from a clerical job to a management position at the Bank of Hawaii. Obama often mentioned her to emphasise his connection to the white Kansas heartland.

But he also admitted that his relationship with his white grandmother was complicated. In his landmark speech on race last April, he acknowledged that his grandmother, for all her strengths, had attitudes on race which at times made him cringe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/04/barack-obama-grandmother-madelyn-dunham
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« Reply #6 on: November 03, 2008, 11:07:48 PM »

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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.

Quote
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."

Still, much of who Obama is comes from his grandmother, said his half sister.

"From our grandmother, he gets his pragmatism, his levelheadedness, his ability to stay centered in the eye of the story," she told The Associated Press. "His sensible, no-nonsense (side) is inherited from her."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g3m4YaeYwDHXS6hHdZJi8pm6cZdAD947NHB80
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« Reply #7 on: November 03, 2008, 11:12:54 PM »

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Madelyn Payne Dunham opened doors for women at Bank of Hawaii with a firm hand and no fanfare, the same way she helped raise her grandson, Barack Obama.

(snip)

Petite and determined, Dunham rose from clerk to bank vice president in the space of a decade, one of two women to reach that position at Bankoh in 1970, the first ever. Dunham remained reserved then, just as she was decades later when the world’s spotlight shone on her grandson.

“She’s a very down-to-earth person, a tiny little woman,” said Alice Dewey, a University of Hawaii professor emeritus and family friend. “No nonsense.”

Quote
Keeping your head on straight, working hard and working wise, treating your neighbor as yourself, those were watchwords for Madelyn Payne Dunham. Obama, who called her “Toot,” short for the Hawaiian word “Tutu,” credits her with passing on those values she grew up with in small-town Kansas. Like many grandparents in Hawaii, she and her husband played a big role in his life.


http://www.starbulletin.com/news/hawaiinews/Madelyn_Dunham_blazed_a_trail_for_women_in_banking.html
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« Reply #8 on: November 03, 2008, 11:16:11 PM »

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Madelyn and Stanley Dunham maintained a simple lifestyle, enjoying family meals together and games of bridge with friends, eschewing the trappings that might come with a bank vice presidency. They were “not interested in rank or power or privilege,” said Georgia McCauley, a close family friend who became “hanai mother” to Obama’s younger sister Maya after their mother died in 1995 at age 52.

“Her grandmother’s lived in the same two-bedroom apartment for 40 years,” McCauley said. “They never drove fancy cars. They chose to put their resources into education and travel.”

Quote
In 1960, the Dunhams moved to Honolulu, where Stanley Dunham continued to work in furniture sales and Madelyn Dunham joined Bankoh. She founded the Escrow Association of Hawaii, said Dennis Ching, now president of Integrity Escrow & Title, and a management trainee under Dunham at Bankoh in 1966.

“She was my first boss,” Ching recalled. “We were afraid of her because she was so gruff. But she was a very warm person after you got to know her and you proved that you could do the job.”

http://www.starbulletin.com/news/hawaiinews/Madelyn_Dunham_blazed_a_trail_for_women_in_banking.html?page=2&c=y
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Lala'sMom
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« Reply #9 on: November 03, 2008, 11:17:35 PM »

Regardless of your political affiliation this woman was a great influence on Obama and she should be respected for having the courage to raise him into a person that has accomplished what some thought was impossible only a few years ago.  God bless her soul.
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« Reply #10 on: November 03, 2008, 11:20:24 PM »

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"She was very strict we were totally scared of her," said Ching who was trained by Dunham in 196. Dunham enjoyed a 25-year career at Bank of Hawaii, where started as a mortgage administrator in 1960 and eventually was promoted to escrow officer and then escrow manager. "She kind of structured the escrow procedures in the state of Hawaii way back in the '60's and she was one of the first VP at Bank of Hawaii."

Ching succeeded Dunham when she retired in 1986. Representative Mazie Hirono also worked under Dunham at Bank of Hawaii.

"Madelyn definitely was one of these people who just through sheer determination, hard work got to where she got to," said Hirono. "She joins the lexicon of women who are ahead of her time."

http://www.khon2.com/home/ticker/33802929.html
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« Reply #11 on: November 03, 2008, 11:27:12 PM »

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In Hawaii, in the late 1960s, this petite and proper woman entered the business world. She began her career as a humble bank teller. However, with grit and gumption, this courageous lady climbed in banking circles. Madelyn Dunham's professional journey began before other daughters of Eve, even on the mainland, sought to survive in a "man's work world." By the early 1970s, she had become one of Bank of Hawaii's first female Vice Presidents.

A young Barack Obama watched his grandmother do as he hopes to do today. She overcame odds and broke through barriers, real and, those while palpable, invisible.

In earlier decades, in Hawaii, the way of a white woman was not easy. Discrimination was direct. Discretion was not the better part of valor. Indeed, valor was not found in vicious cries of condemnation. Native Hawaiians were brash in their bigotry.


Quote
Sam Slom, a Bank of Hawaii economist then, who is now a Republican state senator in Hawaii, recalls that as a part of the white - or "haole" - minority in Hawaii, he would regularly see housing ads that made no effort to hide racial preferences. He says he remembers ads that read, "No haoles" or "AJAs (Americans of Japanese ancestry) Only" or "No Japanese."

"That's the way it was," Slom said. "Did people talk about race? We had local jokes ... like that 'pake' (Chinese) guy or the 'yobo' (Korean) who did this or that.

Quote
Madelyn Dunham however, did not let such racist rants intimidate her. As mentioned in her grandson's autobiography, Dreams From My Father," "Toot" as he called her [short for tutu, Hawaiian for grandmother] befriended a Black custodial worker. She sympathized with her daughter who at a young age was harassed for her friendship with a dark-skinned classmate. The "Grande Dame" Dunham did not dare be as intolerant as society might have taught her to be.

As her grandson, Barack Obama, reminded Americans when race became an issue in the Presidential campaign, on rare occasions, Madelyn Dunham might have slipped. She may have allowed words that expressed her apprehension of strangers to surface. At times, the gracious grandmother stated what she wished she had not. When she did, she was struck hard. For in her heart, she had faith, humans are all honorable, no matter their color, creed, or country of origin. Madelyn Dunham, the mentor of the highest magnitude, learned from her errors and taught as she embodied. Empathy is our essence; it is the greatest educator.

If fear caused her to fall from grace, Ms Dunham would remember that persons she loved, ones who were pure of heart and soul, principled beings, Black and Yellow, Brown and Pink, were her darlings. Indeed, in truth, she never forgot. The woman who gave her home and her self to her grandchildren, Soetoro-Ng of Indonesian descent and Barack Obama, an African American ancestry embraced the beauty that enveloped her.


http://www.opednews.com/articles/Madelyn-Dunham-American-M-by-Betsy-L-Angert-081103-976.html
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« Reply #12 on: November 03, 2008, 11:32:56 PM »

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"Was she ambitious? She had to be to become a vice president," said Clifford Y.J. Kong, 82, who was a senior credit officer at the bank at the time. "She was a top-notch executive to get appointed. It was a tough world."

Quote
Obama's campaign declined to make Dunham available for interviews or to say whether the Illinois senator alerted her before delivering the speech.

Dunham has repeatedly declined to comment to reporters, and Soetoro-Ng declined to comment on Obama's speech about Wright or their grandmother's attitudes on race.

Others who know Dunham were caught off guard by that mention in Obama's speech.

"I was real surprised that he indicated that," said Dennis Ching, who was a 23-year-old management trainee under Dunham beginning in 1966. "I never heard her say anything like that. I never heard her say anything negative about anything. And she never swore."

" I never heard Madelyn say anything disparaging about people of African ancestry or Asian ancestry or anybody's ancestry," Slom said.


Quote
"The first day I met her, I was totally scared," Ching said. "She was the Grande Dame of escrow who started the local escrow association. I was just a trainee who didn't know anything about escrow whatsoever. But she gave me a file and said, 'You're a college grad. Here, close this.' You don't know how to swim, and she throws you in, and you either sink or swim."

Alton Kuioka started at the Bank of Hawaii in 1969 as a 26-year-old management trainee in the loan department. He admitted feeling pressure from Dunham's tough style.

"I was afraid of her," said Kuioka, who is now the bank's vice chairman. "She definitely intimidated me. If you were new and still learning, she was like a drill sergeant."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-07-obamagrandma_N.htm
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« Reply #13 on: November 03, 2008, 11:47:58 PM »

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The message to her grandson was the same one he had come to know all of his life.

"She has always told him you do your best, you take the talents that you've been given and you do the best with them that you can."

http://www.khon2.com/home/ticker/33804349.html

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« Reply #14 on: November 04, 2008, 12:02:03 AM »

Legacy.com obit

http://www.legacy.com/Obituaries.asp?page=LifeStory&personId=119723905



View/Sign Guestbook

http://www.legacy.com/GB/GuestbookView.aspx?PersonId=119723905
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