Barack Obama lost the emotional anchor of his childhood yesterday, only hours before today's historic election, when the grandmother who raised him died of cancer.
Madelyn Dunham, though she was too frail to travel, had tracked her grandson's campaign religiously through cable TV from her Honolulu apartment. She was 86. Obama learned of her death early yesterday morning at Jacksonville in Florida where he had a rally scheduled. He announced the death in a statement issued jointly with his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who had been by Dunham's side.
"It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer," the statement 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 had been braced for the possibility the woman whom he credits with raising him might not live to see possibly his proudest moment as he headed into the election in which he is favoured over John McCain. With so much at stake in the final hours before the polls, Obama carried on campaigning last night, telling a crowd in Charlotte, North Carolina: "She has gone home, and she died peacefully in her sleep with my sister at her side."
Obama said it was difficult for him to talk in detail about Dunham, but he remembered her as "one of those quiet heroes we have across America, who aren't famous ... but each and every day they work hard. They look after their families. They look after their children and their grandchildren."
News of the death brought immediate expressions of sympathy. McCain offered his condolences to the Obama family in a statement, saying: "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."
Obama spoke often on the campaign trail about his grandmother and of his great debt to her. Two weeks ago, the Democrat took a break from campaigning to visit her at her modest apartment block in central Honolulu, after she had fallen and broken her hip. Some had seen the hiatus at such a critical time as a political risk, but Obama said one of his greatest regrets was his failure to have been with his mother when she was dying of ovarian cancer.
He also admitted then he was not sure his grandmother would live to see election day. In his memoir, Obama credited Dunham for giving him the stability he might otherwise have lacked, being raised without a father and by a mother who travelled between Hawaii and Indonesia.
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.
Her death leaves Obama with one remaining link to his childhood: his younger sister, Maya, who lives in Hawaii.