Obama's grandmother 'Toot' eulogized [View All]

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Obama's grandmother 'Toot' eulogized

Madelyn Dunham memorial small.jpg


A woman focuses her camera on a portrait of Madelyn Dunham, President-elect Barack Obama's grandmother, at a ceremony honoring her at The National Cemetery of the Pacific, Friday, Nov. 14, 2008, in Honolulu. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia)

by Frank James

Anyone who's aware of even the most basic details of President-elect Barack Obama's life story knows that his maternal grandmother Madelyn Dunham loomed large in his life, a tough-minded woman who helped raise him in Hawaii from boyhood to manhood.

Affectionately called "Toot," by the president-elect Dunham, who almost made it to Election Day but died right before at age 86, was eulogized yesterday at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

It was a public ceremony for colleagues, friends and the public. A private family ceremony for Dunham, whose remains were cremated, is to be held later.

The Honolulu Advertiser covered the service. Here's an excerpt of its report:

At Punchbowl yesterday, a framed photo of Dunham was draped with a maile lei with pikake; next to it stood a proclamation issued by state lawmakers. Obama and his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng sent a statement read by Al Landon, Bank of Hawaii chief executive officer.

"When Tutu found out that she had little time remaining, she insisted that we dispense with excessive solemnity or sorrow," Landon said, reading from the statement. "She was not afraid of any storm and withstood many in her 86 years. We feel fortunate to have had so much time with our Tutu. She spent more time raising us than did most grandmothers and we benefited from her closeness; we are stronger and wiser because of her."

Dunham was the driving force of her small family, and as a Bank of Hawaii vice president was known by some as the Dean of Escrow, having helped establish many of the regulations that govern escrow in Hawai'i.

Former co-workers spoke of how strict -- and, at times, scary -- she could be when she ran the bank's newly developed escrow division in the early 1960s or testified before state lawmakers.

"She was a tough lady. Tough, tough lady," said Myrtle Choan, who was one of three escrow officers who worked with Dunham. "I was so afraid of her. I called her Mrs. Dunham, never by her first name."

The Dean of Escrow. You would expect someone with that nickname to be pretty serious, especially someone like Dunham, a woman in what was a man's world at the time and a banker back in the days when such institutions held on to home loans. A mistake in escrow might mean the bank wouldn't get its loan repaid if a house burned down or was otherwise destroyed.

Maybe that's what it takes to raise a child to have the fortitude it takes to become president, a serious woman.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/11/printer-obamas_grandmother_toot_eulogi.html