RIP, Madelyn Dunham: Barack Obama's grandmother has died at 86 on the eve of his historic ascension to the presidency.
Obama spoke about her passing not long ago at a rally in Charlotte:
I want everybody to know though a little bit about her. Her name was Madelyn Dunham. And she was born in Kansas in a small town in 1922. Which means she lived through the Great Depression, she lived through two world wars [ED: nope], she watched her husband go off to war, while she looked after her baby and worked on a bomber assembly line. When her husband came back they benefited from the GI bill, they moved west and eventually ended up in Hawaii.
She was somebody who was a very humble person, a very plainspoken person. She is one of those quiet heroes we have all across America, who are not famous, their names are not in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard. They look after their families. They sacrifice for their children, and their grandchildren. They aren't seeking the limelight. All they try to do is do the right thing. And in this crowd, there are a lot of quiet heroes like that, people like that, mothers and fathers and grandparents who have worked hard and sacrificed all their lives and the satisfaction that they get is in seeing their children or maybe their grandchildren or their great-grandchildren live a better life than they did. That is what America is about. That is what we are fighting for.
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