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It's Family First As Obama Visits Ill Grandmother

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The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 25, 2008

HONOLULU - Barack Obama, briefly a grandson instead of a candidate, spent some quiet family time Friday with the ailing woman who helped raise him, while reporters, guards and gawkers waited outside her apartment building.

The presidential candidate spent about an hour with 85-year-old Madelyn Dunham on Thursday night and visited again Friday. He was joined by his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng.

His decision to leave the campaign trail for a day and a half so close to the election reflects the depth of his relationship with Dunham and the severity of her condition.

"Without going through the details too much, she's gravely ill. We weren't sure, and I'm still not sure whether she makes it to Election Day," Obama told ABC's "Good Morning America" in an interview broadcast Friday.

"We're all praying and we hope she does, but one of the things I want to make sure of is I had a chance to sit down with her and to talk to her," he said. "She's still alert and she's still got all her faculties. And I want to make sure that I don't miss that opportunity."

About 75 people gathered outside the apartment building Thursday, including Carole Love, a real estate agent who said Obama's grandmother is "very well-known and well-respected" in the real estate community because of her years of work at a local bank.

Obama was born in Hawaii. His Kansas-born mother and Kenyan father met as college students there, but Dunham and her husband, Stanley, raised Obama for extended periods when his mother lived overseas. He spent years living in the two-bedroom apartment where Dunham is trying to recuperate from a broken hip.

Dunham, who turns 86 on Sunday, has not campaigned for Obama but has followed the presidential race closely, even getting a corneal transplant so she could see the TV better.

"She has really been the rock of the family, the foundation of the family," Obama said.

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