Madelyn and Stanley Dunham

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Madelyn and Stanley Dunham
Born	Madelyn Lee Payne Stanley Armour Dunham
Nationality	American
Children	Ann Dunham
Parents	Rolla Charles Payne and Leona McCurry[1] Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham, Sr. and Ruth Lucille Armour[2]

Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham (born October 26, 1922)^[3] and Stanley Armour Dunham (March 23, 1918 – February 8, 1992) are the maternal grandparents of Barack Obama, the United States Senator from Illinois and candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. They raised Senator Obama from age 10 in their Honolulu, Hawaii high-rise apartment, where the widowed Mrs. Dunham still lives today, in the same city as Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng.^[4]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Raising Barack Obama 3 2008 presidential campaign 4 Today 5 References

[edit] Early life

Madelyn Lee Payne was born in Peru, Kansas, to "stern Methodist parents who did not believe in drinking, playing cards or dancing." She moved with her parents to Augusta, Kansas at age of 3.^[3] She was one of the best students in the graduating class of 1940. But despite her parents' strict upbringing, she loved to go to Wichita, Kansas to hear the "big bands."^[5] While in Wichita, she met Kansas-born Stanley Armour Dunham from the oil-town of El Dorado, Kansas and the "other side of the railroad tracks." ^[5] Stanley attended El Dorado High School.

The Dunhams were Baptists. Unlike the Paynes, Stanley Dunham did not come from a white-collar background. Described as "gregarious, friendly, impetuous, challenging and loud," Stanley was a furniture salesman "who could charm the legs off a couch." Madelyn's parents did not approve of their marriage which occurred on May 4/5, 1940.^[5]

After Pearl Harbor, Stanley Dunham enlisted in the Army, and Madelyn worked during World War II on a Boeing aircraft B-29 assembly line in Wichita. Madelyn's brother Charlie Payne was part of the 89th Infantry Division that liberated the Nazi concentration camp of Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald ^[6], a fact that Barack Obama has referenced in speeches. ^[7]

Madelyn Dunham gave birth to Ann Dunham in Fort Leavenworth on November 29, 1942.^[8] With Madelyn and Stanley both working full-time and struggling, the family moved to California, Kansas, Texas, and Seattle, Washington (on Mercer Island), where Ann graduated from high school. In El Dorado, Kansas, Stanley managed a furniture store while Madelyn worked in restaurants. In Seattle, Stanley worked in a bigger furniture store (Standard-Grunbaum Furniture) while Madelyn eventually became vice-president of a local bank. Mercer Island was then "a rural, idyllic place," quiet, politically conservative and all white. Madelyn and Stanley attended Sunday services at the East Shore Unitarian Church in nearby Bellevue.^[5] While in Washington she attended the University of Washington.^[3] She would also attend classes at the University of California - Berkeley.^[3]

Madelyn and Stanley then moved to Hawaii where he found a better furniture store opportunity. Madelyn started working at the Bank of Hawaii in 1960 and was promoted to be one of the first bank female vice presidents in 1970.^[3] This was no easy task in 1970's Honolulu, where both women and the minority white population were routinely the target of discrimination.^[9]

Ann attended the University of Hawaii and while she was there she met Barack Obama, Sr. a graduate student from Kenya. Both Dunhams were upset when their daughter Ann married Obama, particularly after receiving a long, angry letter from the graduate student's father in Kenya who "didn't want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman."^[5] But the Dunhams adapted. Madelyn Dunham was quoted as saying, "I am a little dubious of the things that people from foreign countries tell me."^[10]

[edit] Raising Barack Obama

After the Obama marriage fell apart and young Barack spent four years with his mother and her second husband in Indonesia, he returned to Hawaii at age 10 to live with his Dunham grandparents and go to the Punahou School in Honolulu. At the time, Ann was an anthropologist employed on development projects in Indonesia and around the world helping women obtain microfinance. Leaving his mother was hard, but Barack preferred to stay in America with his grandparents than in Indonesia with his mother. Obama writes 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."^[10]

In his book, Obama described his grandmother as "suspicious of overwrought sentiments or overblown claims, content with common sense."^{[citation needed]} She is said to have been "quiet yet firm", in contrast to Obama's "boisterous" grandfather Stanley.^[5] Obama considered his grandmother "a trailblazer of sorts, the first woman vice-president of a local bank."^[11] Her colleagues recall her as a "tough boss" who would make you "sink or swim" but had a "soft spot for those willing to work hard." ^[12] Madelyn retired from the bank in 1986.

Stanley Dunham died in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1992 and is buried there in the Punchbowl National Cemetery. Madelyn Dunham took care of her daughter Ann in Hawaii in the months before Ann died of cancer in 1995 at age 53.^[10] Madelyn continues to live in what CBS News has described as the same "non-descript highrise" in Honolulu where she raised her grandson.^[13] Her last interview was in 2004, on the occasion of her grandson's keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention.^[11][5]

[edit] 2008 presidential campaign

Madelyn Dunham has generally not been seen in the 2008 presidential campaign while Sarah Onyango Obama, Obama's step grandmother in Africa has received some attention.^[14] In March 2007, the conservative website NewsMax questioned why Dunham had not appeared in the campaign.^[15] In March 2008, the 85-year-old Dunham was quoted as saying, "I am not giving any interviews...I am in poor health".^[13]

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:

I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.^[16]

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

The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity - she doesn't. But she is a typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know...there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society".^[17][18]

Obama's use of the phrase "typical white person" was highlighted by a gossip columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and subsequently picked up by commentators on the Huffington Post blog, ABC News and other media outlets.^{[19][20][21][22]} Several of the commentators suggested that if Hillary Clinton had used the phrase "typical black person" the public response would have been different.^[19][20] In a CNN interview, when Larry King asked him to clarify the "typical white person" remark, Obama said:

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.^[22]

Madelyn Dunham apparently did not express these views in public. Dennis Ching, who worked with her for more than forty years "never heard her say anything like that. I never heard her say anything negative about anything. And she never swore." Hawaiian State Senator Sam Slom, who worked with her at the Bank of Hawaii, said "I never heard Madelyn say anything disparaging about people of African ancestry or Asian ancestry or anybody's ancestry." ^[23]

[edit] Today

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".^[24]

Dunham lives today in the same small highrise apartment where she raised Obama. She is an avid bridge player, but other than that, she mostly stays at home in her apartment "listening to books on tape and watching her grandson on CNN every day." Obama and his half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng refer to Dunham as "Toot" — short for "tutu," the Hawaiian word for grandparent. ^[25]

[edit] References

v • d • e Barack Obama Political activities 2004 Democratic National Convention · Illinois Senate career · U.S. Senate election in Illinois, 2004 · U.S. Senate career · Presidential campaign, 2008 · "A More Perfect Union" · Political positions · Presidential campaign endorsements Books authored Dreams from My Father · The Audacity of Hope Life Early life and career Family Michelle Obama · Barack Obama, Sr. · Ann Dunham · Maya Soetoro-Ng · Madelyn and Stanley Dunham · Sarah Obama