Barack Obama's Story

Barack Obama adalah seorang kandidat presiden dari Partai Demokrat – Amerika Serikat yang bersaing dengan Hillary Clinton. Ia lahir di Honolulu tahun 1961. Ia menyelesaikan sekolah hukum di Universitas Harvard dan pernah menjadi orang kulit hitam pertama yang menduduki kursi presiden Harvard Law Review. Saat ini ia adalah satu-satunya anggota senat AS yang berkulit hitam dan orang hitam ketiga yang pernah bertanding untuk kursi kepresidenan dalam 100 tahun terakhir sejarah Amerika (Jakarta Post, Nov 2006).

Obama datang ke Jakarta tahun 1967. Kala itu ia masih berusia enam tahun. Jakarta berada dalam transisi dari Soekarno ke Soeharto, dan kenangan berdarah G30S (“Gerakan 30 September” yang membuat Partai Komunis Indonesia diganyang habis-habisan) masih segar membekas. Barry, panggilan akrab Obama, lahir dari seorang ibu Kaukasian dan ayah dari Kenya. Orangtuanya adalah mahasiswa di Universitas Hawaii. Ia diberi nama persis seperti ayahnya, Barack Hussein Obama. Ayahnya meninggalkan Barry ketika ia masih dua tahun. Barry kemudian mengenal Lolo Soetoro, seorang mahasiswa dari Indonesia yang menjadi kekasih ibunya. Dan, ketika ibunya, yang bernama Stanley Ann Dunham, telah menikah dengan Lolo, ia mengajak Barry pergi ke Indonesia tahun 1967.

Dalam memoarnya Dreams from My Father – A Story of Race and Inheritance yang ditulis tahun 1994, ia bercerita tentang masa kecilnya di Jakarta – yang ia sebut “Djakarta”. Jakarta yang ia gambarkan kala itu barangkali masih mirip dengan Jakarta hari ini (setidaknya di beberapa tempat): tengah kota yang sedikit modern, toko-toko kecil yang berderet di jalanan, lalu lintas yang sesak dan macet, pendorong gerobak barang, matahari yang terik dan pengemis di persimpangan jalan.

Sosok lelaki asia, atau lebih khususnya Indonesia, yang melekat dalam ingatan Barry adalah Lolo Soetoro tentunya. Lolo dikenalnya sebagai pemuda yang sopan dan mudah akrab dengan siapa saja; ia juga pandai bermain tennis dan catur. Lolo beragama Islam, meski ia juga masih memberikan ruang bagi pandangan Hinduism dan animisme yang kuno. Jika mengikuti penggolongan Clifford Geertz, mendiang profesor antropologi AS, dalam The Religion of Java (yang lebih merupakan spekulasi ketimbang analisis, dan tak merepresentasikan masyarakat Jawa yang lebih luas), Lolo barangkali bisa dikategorikan “abangan” – pemeluk Islam nominal, yang tidak sepenuhnya mempraktekkan sholat wajib dan filosofinya didasarkan pada sinkretisme antara Hindu, Buddha, animisme, dan elemen-elemen Islam. Lolo bekerja sebagai ahli geologi untuk angkatan bersenjata (army) dan ia pernah ditugaskan di New Guinea sebelum Obama dan ibunya datang ke Jakarta. Barry sering bermain dengan Lolo di waktu senggang. Mereka berbagi kesenangan dengan memberi makan binatang peliharaan seperti ayam, bebek, anjing, kera, burung cendrawasih, burung kakatua dan buaya kecil. Lolo memberi hadiah Obama sarung tinju, yang kemudian ia gunakan untuk berlatih dengannya.

Lolo Soetoro, Stanley Ann Dunham, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Barack Obama (chicagotribune.com)

Dalam waktu kurang dari enam bulan, Barry mahir berbahasa Indonesia. Namun, ibunya tetap mengajarkan bahasa Inggris lima hari seminggu: mereka berdua bangun pukul empat pagi dan belajar selama tiga jam sebelum Barry pergi ke sekolah. “Ini juga bukan piknik yang menyenangkan bagiku, buster,” begitu ibunya mengingatkan ketika Barry pura-pura sakit atau malas belajar.

Obama juga bermain dengan siapa saja, termasuk anak-anak dari petani, pembantu rumah tangga dan birokrat kelas bawah. Ia bermain selayaknya anak-anak kampung di Indonesia: bekejar-kejaran di jalan kecil siang – malam, menangkap jangkrik dan adu layangan (kites battle).

Meski ia tak mendapatkan pengertian yang memuaskan mengenai “kemiskinan”, “korupsi” dan “instabilitas keamanan” (yang ia lihat di Indonesia kala itu), ia mendapatkan buku-buku tentang pergerakan hak-hak sipil, dan rekaman Mahalia Jackson (penyanyi gospel terkenal) serta pidato Dr Martin Luther King yang memukau. Di usia belia itu pula, Barry diajarkan memiliki nilai-nilai luhur manusia, seperti kejujuran, keadilan, berbicara lugas dan menilai secara independen.

Ibunya kadang bercerita tentang murid-murid kulit hitam di wilayah selatan Amerika yang miskin dan hanya mendapat buku-buku bekas dari murid kulit putih, lalu mereka tumbuh menjadi dokter, pengacara dan ilmuwan. Ibunya juga bercerita tentang mars anak-anak yang lebih muda dari Barry, yang berbaris untuk kebebasan. Setiap lelaki kulit hitam adalah Thurgood Marshall atau Sidney Poitier; setiap perempuan kulit hitam adalah Fanny Lou Hamer atau Lena Horne. Menjadi kulit hitam adalah pemilik keturunan yang agung, nasib yang spesial, beban kejayaan yang hanya dipikul mereka yang kuat saja. Di sini, Barry menjadi bersemangat dan memiliki kesadaran bahwa yang-hitam bukanlah yang-kalah dan tertindas, tetapi yang penuh daya juang dan yang merdeka.

Di Jakarta yang panas, Barry yang menjelang usia 10 tetap melihat bahwa penjelasan ibunya dan Lolo mengenai dunia belumlah lengkap. Ia melihat bahwa dunia itu kejam – suatu pengertian yang tak bisa dipahami oleh kakek neneknya di Hawaii yang tenang dan jauh dari negeri yang terbelakang di Asia Tenggara. Ia juga melihat bahwa ras dan warna kulit tak lagi menjadi indikator antropologi belaka, tetapi lebih mengerikan: menjadi prasangka dan rendah diri. Di sini, ia mulai menilai, dalam sikap percaya diri yang kadang tak terjustifikasi, bahwa dunia memerlukan perubahan, sebagaimana ia memandang dunia dengan mata yang berbeda.

Empat tahun adalah periode yang cukup bagi seorang anak untuk memahami bahwa dunia bisa tergerak oleh hal yang trivial seperti ras dan warna kulit. Dunia kadang dirundung kegilaan orang dewasa dalam melihat sesuatu.

Hari ini, Barry yang sementara ini memiliki perolehan delegasi lebih banyak dari Hillary Clinton (Obama: 1202 vs Clinton: 1042) terus berusaha melanggengkan jalannya untuk naik ke kursi kepresidenan AS tahun 2008. Jika ia terpilih menjadi presiden, ia akan menjadi presiden kulit hitam pertama dalam sejarah Amerika. Janjinya mengenai perbaikan ekonomi, pelayanan kesehatan, green technology, energi, lingkungan, hak sipil, kemiskinan, pendidikan, kebijakan luar negeri dan isu penting lainnya akan segera diuji setelahnya.

*Diterbitkan di Berita Harian Singapura 17 Maret 2008 dengan judul “Kaitan Obama: Kenya, Indonesia dan Amerika” (diterjemahkan ke bahasa Melayu)

From : http://ari3f.wordpress.com/2008/03/18/obama-di-djakarta-1967-1971/

Barack Obama, current Senator of Illinois and Presidential Candidate, is a indeed an exemplary Child of Divorce. He’s pretty much exemplary at everything. The New Statesman chose him as one of “10 people who could change the world.” And Time magazine has chosen him twice (2005 & 2007) for their “World’s Most Influential People” list.

Obama shows the intelligence and sensitivity that can come with growing up in a divorced home. I didn’t want to add him to my list of Exemplaries until after I had read his book, but I found a quote on Wikipedia about his attitude towards his screwy family dynamics at the Holidays which I think is really healthy and timely to include now. He seems to revel in the diversity of his extended family. The quote goes: “Michelle will tell you that when we get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, it’s like a little mini-United Nations.” What a perfect training ground for a future political leader!

Obama has written a best-selling memoir, Dreams From My Father, in which he reconciles the struggles he felt as a bi-racial child who never really knew his Father. His parents separated when Barack was 2 years old. Barack’s Father was an economist from Kenya who left the family in Hawaii in order to continue his studies and his parents subsequently divorced. Obama’s Mother remarried and gave birth to Obama’s sister. The family lived in Indonesia for a few years and Obama moved backed to Hawaii to live with his Maternal Grand-parents until he graduated from High School. He attended Columbia University and then went on to Harvard Law School.

Both of Obama’s parents died young as well. His Father was killed in a car accident in Kenya in 1982 when Obama was 21. His Mother passed from Ovarian Cancer in 1995 a few months after the book was published.

Obama has been married to his wife, Michelle, since 1992 and they have two children, Malia Ann and Natasha. If he becomes the President maybe he’ll paint the Columns in front of the White House ebony.

From http://spoiledchildrenofdivorce.wordpress.com

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate, according to CNN reporting.

Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam.

Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and stepfather and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa. (Watch video of Obama's school )

Insight attributed the information in its article to an unnamed source, who said it was discovered by "researchers connected to Senator Clinton." A spokesman for Clinton, who is also weighing a White House bid, denied that the campaign was the source of the Obama claim.

He called the story "an obvious right-wing hit job."

Insight stood by its story in a response posted on its Web site Monday afternoon.

The Insight article was cited several times Friday on Fox News and was also referenced by the New York Post, The Glenn Beck program on CNN Headline News and a number of political blogs. (Watch how the Obama "gossip" spread )

School not a madrassa

But reporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.

He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."

Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.

"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."

Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."

"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."

The Obama aide described Fox News' broadcasting of the Insight story "appallingly irresponsible."

Fox News executive Bill Shine told CNN "Reliable Sources" anchor Howard Kurtz that some of the network's hosts were simply expressing their opinions and repeatedly cited Insight as the source of the allegations.

Obama has noted in his two books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope," that he spent two years in a Muslim school and another two years in a Catholic school while living in Indonesia from age 6 to 10.

From : www.cnn.com

Nov. 28, 2007 | MONTICELLO, Iowa -- Michelle Obama is sitting in an alcove of the Monticello Public Library, a gaggle of children at her feet. The 43-year-old mother of two daughters is finishing up a rousing reading of "Olivia and the Missing Toy," a book she appears to be familiar with. "Do you guys know Olivia?" she asks her rapt audience. "She's a pig; she's quite the personality; she's a drama queen. Do you guys know what a drama queen is? Always into something." When Obama finishes the story, she asks, "Any thoughts on Olivia? Comments? Queries? Statements?" The kids shake their heads no and look imploringly at their new friend for more.

There's time for one more story before Obama has to address the adults gathering in an adjacent room, and someone has set aside two books from which Obama can choose. There's one unfamiliar book called "Skippyjon Jones," and a hardback edition of "Our National Anthem," the sort of red, white and blue book Lynne Cheney would write, and that an aspiring first lady would be expected to read. "Not that one," says Obama, quickly discarding the patriotic volume. She opens "Skippyjon Jones" and begins the story of a Siamese kitten who, for reasons too murky to convey here, soon starts using "his very best Spanish accent," to say things like, "My ears are too beeg for my head. My head ees too beeg for my body. I am not a Siamese cat ... I AM A CHIHUAHUA!"

The tale of Skippyjon Jones' trippy, nearly incomprehensible quest for beans (or something) requires Obama to utter lots of awkwardly accented Spanglish things like, "Yip Yippee Yippito! It's the end of Alfredo Buzzito! Skippito is here, we have nothing to fear. Adios to the bad Bumblebeeto!" As she perseveres, the kids go loco, rolling off their beanbags with belly-busting laughter. The wife of presidential contender Barack Obama is laughing pretty hard herself, making significant "Help me!" eye contact with her chief of staff. But she forges on, hollering "Holy Frijoles!" with great gusto. "This is a crazy book!" she says several times, eyebrows raised meaningfully at the adults in the room.

The next day, while Michelle is giving an interview elsewhere in Iowa, one of her staffers, who had missed the reading, overhears me and a photographer laughingly recall "Skippyjon Jones"-gate. When she hears about the rejection of the national anthem and the politically incorrect Mexican accent, the staffer half-jokingly, half-pleadingly says to me, "That was off the record."

The children's book is a minor, insignificant choice, one that brought down the 6-year-old house. But on the presidential campaign trail, the teensiest of signifiers can carry weight. In September, Obama's husband landed in hot water when he failed to put his hand to his heart during the national anthem at Sen. Tom Harkin's steak fry. In light of that absurd kerfuffle -- you're not even supposed to put your hand to your heart during the national anthem -- the safe choice would really have been to read the kids "Our National Anthem." But Michelle, a daughter of Chicago's working-class South Side, a Princeton and Harvard Law graduate, who has made no secret of her reticence about jumping into the presidential fray, could not help choosing the book that was untested over the book that was boring.

Obama is by no means the only presidential partner shaking things up out there. We're living in the Wild West of educated, professional, outspoken political spouses; in a post-Hillary, post-feminist nation, the ladies and gentlemen hitting the trail are not armed with recipes and decorating ideas, but with Ph.D.s and presidencies on their résumés. The Family Circle cookie contest -- in which the wives of the two major-party presidential nominees are asked to submit their favorite confections -- may not be completely extinct. But when, four years ago, a bescarfed Teresa Heinz Kerry blithely admitted that her purported recipe for pumpkin spice cookies had been sent in by someone in her office, and that she herself didn't even like pumpkin spice cookies, it was clear that the façade of the happy first hausfrau was crumbling.

This election's crop of spouses includes Judith Giuliani, whose husband suggested she might one day sit in on Cabinet meetings, the tongue-pierced Elizabeth Kucinich, and Elizabeth Edwards, who while living with cancer has become her husband's brassiest and most potent (and most unassailable) weapon against his opponents.

But Obama's particular impulse -- to reject meaningless political pablum or helpmate hokum in favor of unexpected candor and a good laugh -- has already distinguished her yearlong tenure on the presidential campaign circuit.

"You've never seen anyone like us before, and that's a little freaky, isn't it?" she asks the crowd of grown-ups who've assembled at the Monticello library after the bangito conclusion of "Skippyjon Jones." "It's like, 'They're real!' Well, guess what? Real people can be politicians too. We as a country have grown suspicious of real. We take the fake."

In different versions of the speech she gives in Monticello and other towns during a 48-hour, mid-November blitz of Iowa, Michelle promises her audiences that "you will not see another politician like [Barack] in your lifetime. Because they don't come along very often. There are other people like him out there, but they don't choose to go into politics because they have sense. My husband is a little crazy."

From : www.salon.com

Hawaii's favorite son had taken the long flight in from mainland, leaving a rally in downtown Indianapolis to arrive at 7:15 p.m. Thursday, Honolulu time. Back east, in his second hometown of Chicago, it was already past midnight — and an hour later in Washington where he hopes to take up a famous residence next year. Sen. Barack Obama immediately drove to see his ailing grandmother, the woman he affectionately calls "Toot," at her apartment on Beretania Street, before retiring to a hotel on the city's touristy Waikiki strip. By daylight, he was again at the Beretania Street apartment, emerging at one point, dressed in a black polo shirt, dark-glasses and flip-flops, walking pensively and unsmiling along the unsteady and overgrown the sidewalk on nearby Young Street before the crowding press forced him back into the privacy of his grandmother's home. He did not issue any statement and did not speak to journalists hungry for any kind of word.

Despite the silence, the locals feel that, by itself, Obama's brief 22-hour visit spoke volumes — and more importantly reflected the islands' ethos and culture. Take the nickname he uses for his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. It's short for tutu, the Hawaiian term for grandmother. And, to the islanders, it means that even though Obama may be the U.S. senator from Illinois, he really is at heart a Honolulu-born, son of Hawai'i who will drop anything to care for his family, says another Hawaii-born politician, Democratic state Sen. Clayton Hee. "It is all at once a message to the world," says Hee, a Native Hawaiian who has served as the chairman of the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs. "It is an identity to the Islands. From the first time I heard that he referred to his grandmother as 'Toot,' I felt a profound linkage to this man. As a Native Son of Hawaii, it suggests very strong in my mind that there is a connection to Hawaii that remains at the core of this man who seeks to be president."

"You can hear it in his voice when he says it, 'Toot,'" says Alice Dewey, a University of Hawaii professor emeritus of anthropology, who is a family friend and was the graduate studies advisor to Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham. "They are very close. [His grandmother] has always been a small, slight woman, but tough. She held his nose to the grindstone, but also lavished him with love."

In early October, Madelyn Dunham, her mobility already limited by osteoporosis, slipped in her apartment and broke her hip. She has since suffered from undisclosed, serious medical problems. Obama made the decision to temporarily postpone his campaign on Thursday night and Friday because he did not want to live through the same experience in 1995 when he arrived too late to say farewell to his mother who died of cancer at the age of 53, says U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie. "Those of us who live here in the Islands are used to how long it takes to get here," Abercrombie says. "If the physicians say it's a serious situation, you don't hesitate to come, particularly if it's his grandmother and the last link to his mom. It's the Hawaiian style, the way we deal with things in Hawai'i. Its all family. It's all ohana. We all come together."

Obama's family in Hawaii has kept a relatively low profile through his campaign. But his grandmother was anything but low key during her career. Dunham was a trailblazer in her day in the 1960s and 1970s, a Caucasian female who rose in 1970 to become one of the first two female vice presidents at Bank of Hawaii, the islands' largest bank at the time. After she retired in the mid-1980s, she has mainly kept to herself in the Beretania apartment, cared for mostly by Obama's sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. Soetoro-Ng does appear on her brother's campaign; she and her husband are prized guests at dinner parties in Honolulu social circles. But she tends to keep the press at arms length, trying to lead the life of a teacher at one of Honolulu's private schools, La-Pietra-Hawaii School for Girls on the slopes of Diamond Head.

Some acquaintances say that Soetoro-Ng has the independent spirit of her mother, Stanley Ann, who took young Maya along when she went to Indonesia and Africa to pursue her master's and doctoral degrees studying and helping village craftsmen (Barack was left behind to be raised by Madelyn Dunham and her late husband Stanley in the 10th story Beretania duplex in the Makiki area of Honolulu). Nevertheless, cautioned by her brother's campaign advisers, Soetoro-Ng always watches her words, knowing how easily the words of a relative can reflect in unintended ways on the candidate.

Although Honolulu is the 14th largest city in America, the chain of islands in the most isolated, populated spot on the planet makes Hawaii a small-town kind of place to live. The place reacts with a kind of star-struck energy whenever an islander makes it big. Friends and families, for example, organized call-in centers to flood votes for Hawaii-born contestants on "American Idol." This year's Little League World Series champions from the Oahu community of Waipio were given a parade by the city that ran straight through Waikiki. But Obama's candidacy for the U.S. presidency "transcends them all," Sen. Hee said. "Maybe it's because we're isolated from the other 49 states that we feel so strongly about those who bring out the best in these Islands," Hee says. "But can you imagine a son of Hawaii is going to be the next president of the United States of America? People better wear zippered shirts because their buttons are going to be pop off from the tremendous pride."

Already, local anticipation is brimming over. It wasn't just the press crowding to see the candidate outside his grandmother's apartment. "I appreciate him visiting his grandmother," says Arthur Witherspoon of Honolulu, who stood outside Dunham's apartment on Friday within the crowd of about 100 people. "It shows character," says Norma Parado, who lives half of each year in Honolulu, "I'm so glad he's here doing this. He's paused his campaigning for family. That's the kind of person you want leading our country."

From : www.time.com

Barack Obama's sister has not emerged in public since the death of their grandmother two days before her brother's historic presidential election, but in a post-election e-mail to close friends, Maya Soetoro-Ng said, "I wept tears of joy for all of us on Tuesday. He may not be a perfect man. Certainly, he has often said that he'll likely be an imperfect President, but he is a good man, a smart man, a disciplined soul who balances temperance with determination and courage. We've made a great choice, I assure you."

Their maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died two days before the Nov. 4 presidential election in the two-bedroom apartment where Dunham raised Obama. The e-mail was shared with this reporter (and with the daily Honolulu Advertiser).

In the final run-up to Election Day, Obama abruptly changed his campaign schedule to fly home and visit Dunham, who was dying of cancer at the age of 86. After her death was announced on Election Day eve, he spoke movingly of her at a final campaign appearance, tears streaming down his face. Services for Dunham have not been announced, and the Honolulu mortuary handling the arrangements, Borthwick Mortuary, has not returned phone calls. Obama's campaign, however, says he will return home to Honolulu sometime in December, prior to his Jan. 20 Inauguration 5,100 miles away in the nation's capitol.

During a family vacation in August, Obama brought his family to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, which overlooks the apartment where he grew up. Obama and his children left two leis at niche No. 440, where the ashes of his grandfather Stanley Dunham are in an urn behind a bronze plaque. Stanley Dunham was an Army sergeant in World War II; he died of prostate cancer in 1992. Officials at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific have since been contacted by Borthwick Mortuary about holding a service for Madelyn Dunham, says Gene Castagnetti, the cemetery's director. Stanley Dunham's niche is large enough to hold another urn. If the family decides on that arrangement, Sergeant Dunham's bronze plaque covering the niche would be removed and replaced with another that would include his wife's name, birthday and date of death.

As it turned out, Dunham's koa (wood) urn arrived on Election Day, Soetoro-Ng wrote in her e-mail. Soetoro-Ng surrounded the urn with pictures of Dunham's late daughter Stanley Ann Dunham (the mother of Soetoro-Ng and the President-elect), Dunham's grandchildren and her great grandchildren — "all of us who benefited so much from her steady voice and hand," Soetoro-Ng wrote.

Soetoro-Ng could have accepted her brother's invitation to be by his side on election night in Chicago. But, as she had for much of the past eight years, she chose to stay in the apartment on Beretania Street where Dunham raised Obama as a boy and where Soetoro-Ng later cared for her. In the post-election e-mail, Soetoro-Ng writes of the sometimes conflicting emotions surrounding her grandmother's death and brother's success — and of the need to unplug for a while with her husband Konrad and their 4-year-old daughter Suhaila on Oahu's rural North Shore. She writes that she has been flooded with e-mail messages "of both congratulation and condolence .... There's a wide swatch of emotion cutting through me, sometimes swirling, never simple ... a briny mixture of elation, sadness, determination, regret, pride, hope, fatigue. You can imagine ..."

Dunham, whom Obama called Toot (a form of Tutu, the Hawaiian word for "grandparent"), never showed self-pity or fear as she faced the end of her life, Soetoro-Ng writes. But Dunham could be wickedly funny. "When she saw the number of flowers that had been sent to her," Soetoro-Ng writes, "she said, 'Oh my ... with all of this hullabaloo, it's going to be embarrassing if I DON'T die.' I gave her a chuckle and of course told her that I wouldn't at all mind such an embarrassment, and then I invited her to stay and dance with me into the New Year. She couldn't stay, but she certainly tried, and defied expectations again and again."

From : www.time.com

Madelyn Payne Dunham, Senator Barack Obama's maternal grandmother, died in Honolulu early this morning. She was 86 and had been suffering from cancer. Dunham helped raise the Democratic presidential nominee and frequently was cited in his speeches as an inspiration. Two weeks ago Obama took a day off from his campaign to visit the ailing woman he called Toot — a form of Tutu, which means "grandparent" in Hawaiian.

Dunham died between 3 and 4 a.m. Hawaii time, with Obama's half sister Maya Soetoro-Ng at her side. Media outlets reported that Obama learned of the death shortly after 8 a.m. today in Jacksonville, Fla.

A statement released this afternoon by Obama and Soetoro-Ng 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. She was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure."

"It's very, very sad, because we all hoped that she would be able to sustain her strength through Election Day itself," said Hawaii Democratic Representative Neil Abercrombie, a family friend. "She passed away confident that he would succeed ... His strength, his calm demeanor that characterized him in these last weeks and last days — this quiet strength that come across so clearly — that comes from his grandmother; there's no question about that. It's her great legacy."

Obama may be the man of the hour, or of the year, but his biography is defined by the women in his family. Ann Dunham was the "mother from Kansas" who married the man from Kenya. Michelle Williams Obama, the candidate's wife, has become an important, increasingly warming voice on the campaign stump. His daughters Malia and Sasha stole the show the opening night of the Democratic National Convention.

From : www.time.com

Each of us lives a life of contradictory truths. We are not one thing or another. Barack Obama's mother was at least a dozen things. S. Ann Soetoro was a teen mother who later got a Ph.D. in anthropology; a white woman from the Midwest who was more comfortable in Indonesia; a natural-born mother obsessed with her work; a romantic pragmatist, if such a thing is possible.

"When I think about my mother," Obama told me recently, "I think that there was a certain combination of being very grounded in who she was, what she believed in. But also a certain recklessness. I think she was always searching for something. She wasn't comfortable seeing her life confined to a certain box."

Obama's mother was a dreamer. She made risky bets that paid off only some of the time, choices that her children had to live with. She fell in love—twice—with fellow students from distant countries she knew nothing about. Both marriages failed, and she leaned on her parents and friends to help raise her two children.

"She cried a lot," says her daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng, "if she saw animals being treated cruelly or children in the news or a sad movie—or if she felt like she wasn't being understood in a conversation." And yet she was fearless, says Soetoro-Ng. "She was very capable. She went out on the back of a motorcycle and did rigorous fieldwork. Her research was responsible and penetrating. She saw the heart of a problem, and she knew whom to hold accountable."

Today Obama is partly a product of what his mother was not. Whereas she swept her children off to unfamiliar lands and even lived apart from her son when he was a teenager, Obama has tried to ground his children in the Midwest. "We've created stability for our kids in a way that my mom didn't do for us," he says. "My choosing to put down roots in Chicago and marry a woman who is very rooted in one place probably indicates a desire for stability that maybe I was missing."

Ironically, the person who mattered most in Obama's life is the one we know the least about—maybe because being partly African in America is still seen as being simply black and color is still a preoccupation above almost all else. There is not enough room in the conversation for the rest of a man's story.

But Obama is his mother's son. In his wide-open rhetoric about what can be instead of what was, you see a hint of his mother's credulity. When Obama gets donations from people who have never believed in politics before, they're responding to his ability—passed down from his mother—to make a powerful argument (that happens to be very liberal) without using a trace of ideology. On a good day, when he figures out how to move a crowd of thousands of people very different from himself, it has something to do with having had a parent who gazed at different cultures the way other people study gems.

It turns out that Obama's nascent career peddling hope is a family business. He inherited it. And while it is true that he has not been profoundly tested, he was raised by someone who was.

In most elections, the deceased mother of a candidate in the primaries is not the subject of a magazine profile. But Ann Soetoro was not like most mothers.

From : www.time.com