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(AP) - Barack Obama's grandmother, whose personality
and bearing shaped much of the life of the Democratic presidential
contender, has died, Obama announced Monday, one day before the
election. Madelyn Payne Dunham was 86.

      Obama announced the news from the campaign trail in Charlotte,
N.C. The joint statement with his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng said
Dunham died peacefully late Sunday night after a battle with
cancer.


      They said: "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."

      Obama learned of her death Monday morning while he was
campaigning in Jacksonville, Fla. He planned to go ahead with
campaign appearances.

      The family said a private ceremony would be held later.

Republican John McCain issued condolences to his opponent and the Obama family. 

"Our
thoughts and prayers go out to them as they remember and celebrate
the life of someone who had such a profound impact in their
lives," the statement by John and Cindy McCain said.

      Last month, Obama took a break from campaigning and flew to
Hawaii to be with Dunham as her health declined.


      Obama 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." 

Outside the apartment building where Dunham died, reporters and
TV cameras lined the sidewalk as two police officers were posted
near the elevator. Signs hanging in the apartment lobby warned the
public to keep out.

      Longtime family friend Georgia McCauley visited the 10th-floor
apartment where Obama had lived with his grandparent.

      "So many of us were hoping and praying that his grandmother
would have the opportunity to witness her grandson become our next
president," said state Rep. Marcus Oshiro, an Obama supporter.
"What a bittersweet victory it will be for him."


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.


      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 weeklong 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 muumuus 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.


      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."


      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."


      Madelyn Lee Payne was born to Rolla and Leona Payne in October,
1922, in Peru, Kan., but lived much of her childhood in nearby
Augusta.


      She was the oldest of four children, and she loved to read
everything from James Hilton's "Lost Horizon" to Agatha
Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd."


      Dunham and her husband were "vicious" bridge players,
according to her brother Jack. After retirement, the two of them
would take island cruises and do little but play bridge and a more
difficult version called duplicate bridge.
     

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Politics and Government News

Madelyn Dunham, 86, died peacefully in Hawaii Sunday after a battle with cancer.  Late last month, Obama took a break from campaigning and flew to
Hawaii to be with Dunham, who helped raise him.

Obama's grandmother dies 2 days before election

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