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.

Madelyn Dunham, born Madelyn Lee Payne on October 26, 1922, in Peru, Kansas, was the eldest of four children of Rolla Charles "R.C."

Payne and Leona Belle (McCurry) Payne.

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.

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.

During World War II, Madelyn Dunham worked the night shift on a Boeing B-29 assembly line in Wichita and Stanley Dunham enlisted in the Army.

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.

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.

While in Washington, Madelyn Dunham attended the University of Washington although she never completed a degree.

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.

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".

The Dunhams adapted, but Madelyn Dunham was quoted as saying, "I am a little dubious of the things that people from foreign countries tell me".

In 1961, Barack Obama was born to Ann and Barack Obama Sr. They divorced in 1963 and Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia.

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.

In 1970s Honolulu, both women and the minority white population were routinely the target of discrimination.

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".

Obama and his half-sister, Maya Soetoro referred to Dunham as "Toot"—short for "tutu", the Hawaiian word for grandmother.

In his book, Obama described Dunham as "quiet yet firm", in contrast to his "boisterous" grandfather.

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.

During an interview for Vanity Fair, Obama said, "She was the opposite of a dreamer, at least by the time I knew her. ... Whether that was always the case or whether she scaled back her dreams as time went on and learned to deal with certain disappointments is not entirely clear. But she was just a very tough, sensible, no-nonsense person".

During his teenage years, it was his grandmother who "injected" into him "a lot of that very midwestern, sort of traditional sense of prudence and hard work", even though "some of those values didn't sort of manifest themselves until I got older".

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.

Her brother, Charlie Payne was part of the 89th Infantry Division, which liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald, a fact Barack Obama has referred to in speeches.

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

Until her death, Madelyn Dunham lived in the same small high-rise apartment where she raised her grandson, Barack Obama.

She died on November 2, 2008, two days before her grandson was elected president.