As an historical aside,
Obama's mother's forebears
were slaveholders.
One of Obama's
great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned
two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 Census in Nelson County, Ky.
The same records show that one of Obama's
great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two
slaves.
Stanley Armour
Dunham
Stanley Armour Dunham was
born March 23, 1918, came from the
oil-town of El Dorado, Kansas, the "other side of the railroad tracks."
He attended El Dorado High School and
worked
on oil rigs during the Depression.
In1926, eight year old
Stanley Dunham discovered his mother's bodyafter she has committed suicide. Stanley's father then abandoned
the traumatized boy, leaving Stanley in the care of his maternal
grandparents in El Dorado, Kansas.
The emotionally damaged boy grew into a rebellious teenager.
Stanley punched his High School principal and becomes a drifter,
hopping rail cars to Chicago, then California, then back again. At age
20, he married Madelyn Payne on the night of her Senior Prom on May 5, 1940.
The
newlyweds didn't tell her parents of the marriage until after she had
her high school diploma in hand.
Madelyn Lee Payne
Madelyn Lee Payne was
born in October 26, 1922, in the tiny Kansas town of Peru.
When she was 3, Rolla Payne moved his young family to the nearby
boomtown of Augusta, population about 5,000,
where she was raised.
Rolla and his wife, Leona, a
teacher, lived in a "company house" at the edge town. The
one-story frame house had three bedrooms, an indoor bathroom, a front
porch that went the full width of the house and another enclosed one out
back where Leona Payne did the family laundry.
Behind the house
were the racks where the oil company stored its pipe and about 100 feet
away was the office where Rolla Payne worked. Next door was the
empty lot where the Paynes and other neighborhood kids played baseball.
Madelyn was the oldest of four children. Fifteen years
separate her and the baby, Jack.
"She called us 'the kids,'"
remembers her younger sister Margaret Payne, who shared a bedroom with
Madelyn and is known in the family by her middle name, Arlene.
"I
would say she more liked to ignore us," says Payne, 82, a retired
statistics professor now living in Chapel Hill, N.C. "But that was
the age difference, and not that she was mean or anything."
In a
family of avid readers, Madelyn was voracious.
In 1939, when
Simon & Schuster introduced the U.S. to paperbacks with its Pocket Books
series, Madelyn subscribed. She devoured titles like James
Hilton’s "Lost Horizon," Emily Bronte’s "Wuthering Heights," "Five Great
Tragedies" by Shakespeare and "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" by Agatha
Christie -- which fed a lifelong love of murder mysteries.
The
Bible was also a constant in the Payne household. Contrary to the
image of Dust Bowl, Depression-era Kansas, the Payne children weren’t
force-fed the Scriptures at the dining room table.
"No, that was
an individual effort," says brother Charles, 83, the closest in age to
her.
Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham -- U.S. Social Security
Death Index birth 26 October 1922 death 2 November 2008 -- Honolulu,
Hawaii record title: U.S. Social Security Death Index -- first name:
Madelyn middle name: Lee Payne last name: Dunham birth date: 26
October 1922 social security number: 558-20-7458 place of issuance:
California last residence: Honolulu, Hawaii zip code of last
residence: 96826 death date: 2 November 2008 estimated age at death:
86
History Not Clear
Many websites list Madelyn as the oldest of three children,
when she was the oldest of four followed by Charles, Margaret and
youngest brother Jon. Charles lives in Chicago, Margaret Payne lives in
N.C. and Jon lives in Az. The marriage date of Stanley Armour and
Madelyn has also been reported as various different dates and I finally
found an article published by a Kansas paper which says they married
during the weekend of the junior senior spring ball in May of 1940, as
reported by Madelyn’s friends. Her parents didn’t approve of her
relationship with Stanley and although she had married him May 4th/5th
she remained living at home, not telling her parents until she had her
high school diploma in hand in June of 1940.
An Elopement
They eloped
a month later,
on the evening of her high school graduation in June, 1940. She
was seventeen and a half years old, he was twenty-one. Her parents
disapproved of the match.
Stanley enlisted for military service in World War II
in June of 1942 and served in Patton's 3rd Army. He saw no combat.
After the war
Stanley became a retail furniture salesman. He moved his family to
Oklahoma, Texas, California and back to Kansas before they settled in
the Seattle area in 1955.
Although a Seattle
Times article reports that the family rented an apartment in the
Columbia City neighborhood of Seattle, records also show that the family
lived in the Wedgwood Estates apartment complex, in one of four units at
7529 39th Avenue NE, during their first year in Washington state.
Stanley Ann Dunham attended 8th grade at Eckstein Middle School in the
Wedgwood neighborhood.
He died in
Honolulu on
Feb. 8th, 1992. He is buried
at Punchbowl Cemetery because of
his military service. Madelyn died November 2, 2008. Obama
spread her ashes onto the sea from the cliffs of Hawaii.
Madelyn attended college at the University of Washington and then went to work on a
bomber assembly line during WW II. After the war, she attended UC-Berkeley,
worked various jobs on the Mainland. In 1960, when they came to the Islands, she
joined the Bank of Hawaii. She also
volunteered in probate department of the Oahu Circuit Court
House.
While Madelyn could be stern and tough at work, her personality changed
around her husband. A friend said he seemed like a real
rough-and-tumble guy. When Madelyn was with Stanley, she was very
quiet.
He was the man of the house.
An Early Photo
Stanley Ann and Stanley Armour
Mercer Island -- The Fifties
The Dunhams went from El Dorado to a bigger
opportunity in 1955 -- to a large store in downtown Seattle called
Standard-Grunbaum Furniture at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Pine Street.
"First in Furniture, Second at Pine," read the Yellow Pages ad in the
Seattle telephone directory.
In 1956 the family learned of a
new high school opening on Mercer Island, then a considerably more rural
community (the city itself would not incorporate until 1960), and moved
to the island, renting unit 219 of the Shorewood Apartments at 3206 E
Lexington Way. Stanley Dunham worked as a salesman at Standard-Grunbaum
Furniture in downtown Seattle initially, though by 1957 he was working
at Doces Majestic Furniture in Seattle. Madelyn found work as an
escrow officer in Bellevue.
Seattle in the 1950s had no Space
Needle, no Microsoft, no Starbucks. Mercer Island, now a pricey home to
corporate luminaries such as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, was then
"a rural, idyllic place," said Elaine Johnson, who remembered summers
with "sleepovers along the water in sleeping bags. It was so
safe." The island was quiet, politically conservative and all
white.
As a suburb, Mercer Island was still in its infancy. The 1950
census counted about 5,000 people, almost all white. Sanctioned
deer hunts had stopped just a few years before the Dunhams arrived.
But consistent with the 1950s, there were undercurrents of
turmoil. In 1955, the chairman of the Mercer Island school board,
John Stenhouse, testified before the House Un-American Activities
Subcommittee that he had been a member of the Communist Party.
Also in 1955, Madelyn, at age 33, became VP of the Mercer Island Bank.
Madelyn and Stanley shed
their Methodist and Baptist upbringing and began attending Sunday
services at the
East Shore Unitarian Church in nearby Bellevue.
"In the 1950s, this was sometimes known as 'the little Red church on the
hill,'" said Peter Luton, the church's senior minister.
Skepticism, the kind that Stanley embraced and passed on to his
daughter, was welcomed here.
Hawaii
In 1960, Anna's father found a better opportunity at a furniture store in Hawaii
and moved his family to Honolulu. The Dunhams originally lived at
2277 Kamehameha Ave., before moving to 2234 University Ave.
Beginning that summer (1960), with the family's move
to Hawaii, Stanley Ann enters her "beatnik" period.
Madelyn would later rise to be a vice president in the escrow department
of the Bank of Hawaii. She was also known to
volunteer at the Oahu Circuit Court Probate Department. In
the early 70s, Stanley would become an insurance salesman.
When Ann Dunham
arrived in Hawaii, she was a full fledged radical leftist and
practitioner of critical theory. She practiced a little photo
modeling too. I won't post the pictures but
this website has them.
Mainstream media sources, the recollection of friends and associates
and Obama's account are frequently at odds about where Anna was, and
what she was doing, at any
point in time. No one knows for sure, and there are no records to
substantiate, where Stanley Ann Dunham was, or what she was doing,
between the summer of 1960, until she showed up in Hawaii with a two
week old in August, 1961.
What follows is the best account, cobbled together from
multiple sources. There are additional supporting sources at the
"More Stuff" button.
The problem with documenting what Anna did, or did not do, is that
much of what we think we know about these events comes from Obama's
"Dreams...," and that account has been proven to be unreliable -- but it
was first.
Typical
White
People
Obama would
describe his grandparents, the people
who would raise him, as "white folk" and later, during the campaign
would describe his grandmother as a "typical white person."
Madelyn Dunham, who Obama affectionately called
"Toot,"
raised Barry Obama. It was probably her money that got him
admitted to the prestigious Punahou School in Hawaii and paid his fees.
Her efforts were formative, perhaps even more so than those of Obama's
mother Ann, Madelyn's daughter. And yet Madelyn is being hidden
away, as Obama said, "somewhere in Hawaii."
Two years before Anna left Barry with her mother, in December 1971,
Madelyn was named one of the first two female vice presidents at Bank of
Hawaii.
It was a no-nonsense, serious workplace. And Dunham had a
reputation as a tough boss who quickly tested young management trainees.
"The first day I met her I was totally scared," Ching said. "She was the
Grande Dame of escrow who started the local escrow association. I
was just a trainee who didn't know anything about escrow whatsoever.
But she gave me a file and said, 'You're a college grad. Here,
close this.' You don't know how to swim and she throws you in and
you either sink or swim."
And America's media have supinely allowed Obama to pretend he has no
white relatives. On may occasions, his Kenyan step-grandmother,
Sarah, who
never laid eyes on Obama Jr. until 1986, has been put on public display
as "his grandmother." His real
grandmother, who actually raised him, has been put away in a closet.
The Chicago Tribune
reports "the Obama campaign declined to make
available."
Is this because she is white and Barry Obama is a "black" candidate for
president or is it because she holds a secret.
The "segregation" of Madelyn Dunham,
Obama's white grandmother, and only real grandmother, has to be one of
the cruelest and most mendacious political kidnappings this nation has
ever seen.
On the other hand,
Stanley Dunham was in the habit of taking the
11-12-year-old Barry to a bar in the black "red-light district," the
hangout of prostitutes and drug pushers, according to Obama's book.
I would see little Barry -- as his
grandfather called him -- little Barry and his grandfather mostly all
over. They walked everywhere. Stan Dunham, his grandfather,
took him everywhere. They met everybody and knew everybody.
I mean it's Hawaii, right? It was easy. You wanna be
friendly? You wanna see people and know people? You can do
it, and he did, and little Barry went with him everywhere.
And
yet nobody from back then is coming forward today, except Neal
Abercrombie. No doctors, nurses, neighbors, nobody.
Stanley
Dunham died in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1992 and is interred in the Punchbowl
National Cemetery. He lies at rest in the National Memorial
Cemetery of the Pacific in Court 1 wall B niche 440.
Obama Throws His Grandmother Under The Bus Again
What’s the deal with Barack Obama
selling out
his own grandmother every chance he gets?
Obama actually called his grandmother a racist
in public -- a "typical
white person" -- in front of the entire world! Now he points to her as a classic
example of the elderly stealing valuable healthcare resources from the
nation. Does Obama’s depravity towards Mrs. Dunham know no end?
In another example of
Obama’s lousy attitude towards the woman that raised him since he was 10
years old, the New York Times this weekend recalled an interview in
which he criticized his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, for electing to
undergo hip replacement surgery despite being terminally ill:
"I don’t know how much that hip replacement
cost… (I don’t feel) society making those decisions to give my
grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a
hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model."
"I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their
lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health
care bill."
Apparently Mrs. Dunham is exhibit #1 on how the no good elderly are
heartlessly wasting the nation’s collective healthcare resources for
their own selfish purposes, like wanting to walk.
As a productive
member of society, Mrs. Dunham had every right to make her own decisions
regarding healthcare, including a new hip if that is what she and her
doctors saw fit. It is not our place, or anyone else’s for that
matter, to be dictating to seniors at what time they no longer qualify
for expensive healthcare procedures.
The audacity for Obama to
suggest that his own grandmother wasn’t worth a $20,000 hip replacement
surgery at the end of her life is remarkable. Michelle Obama will
spend more than that on hair and makeup this year alone!
This
latest criticism of Mrs. Dunham is reminiscent of Obama’s highly touted
March 2008 race speech where, in addition to his famous declaration, "I
can no more disown him (Rev. Wright) than I can disown the black
community," Obama described his grandmother as, "a woman who once
confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street and who, on
more than one occasion, has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that
made me cringe."
I don’t know if it’s a race thing, or age thing, or what, but it
makes me wonder, if Obama thinks so poorly of own grandmother, I can
only imagine how little he feels for the rest of us.
The Invisible Grandmother
Obama's real grandmother,
Madelyn Dunham, who raised him and put
him through the prestigious Punahou School, remains a shadowy figure.
Hidden away by Obama's campaign, the woman that Obama described as a
"typical white person" is, according to Obama, "somewhere
in Hawaii."
Real grandma -- "typical white person"
In August, 2008, after delivering a campaign speech, Obama's
first
stop on his Hawaii vacation was a visit to his white grandmother's Makiki
apartment, where he lived during his youth.
Obama -- escorted by Secret Service and accompanied by a few campaign
staff and a pool of reporters and camera crews -- arrived at about 4:10
p.m. yesterday and spent an hour with his 85-year-old maternal
grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who helped raise him. He was not
accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and two daughters.
The original "typical white person," probably
doesn't have a lot of time left, but Obama didn't think to bring her
grandchildren for a visit -- and after almost 2, years spent an hour --
what a loving grandson.
Toot Dies
Honoring his beloved toot. President-elect
Barack Obama and family spent the third day of their vacation,
remembering the life of Obama's grandmother Madelyn Dunham.
Dying
of Cancer, Obama left the campaign trail and rushed to be by her side to
be one last time in October. She died at the age of 86 just days
before her grandson won the presidency. Obama says his Toot
raised, loved, and helped him become the man he is today. Almost
two months after Dunham's death, the family pays their final respects.
Just as the wind, emotions run strong at Lanai lookout.
President-elect Barack Obama and family arrive around 3:30pm after an
earlier private service for "Toot" at a Nuuanu church. (video)
Following the ceremony, Obama
drove to the Lanai Lookout. He and about 20 members of his
family climbed over a stone wall and down onto rocky ledges to scatter
Dunham’s ashes.
She died late the night of the 2nd, the body was
removed by 3:30 am Monday morning, the urn of ashes was returned Tuesday
morning and an apartment lived in for 40 years was cleaned out by Nov.
6th.
She was cremated and her urn of ashes was returned to her
apartment by the morning of Tuesday, November 4th.
The medical
examiner wasn’t involved. The staff from the funeral home showed
up for her body before 3:30 am Monday and brought the ashes back by
Tuesday morning.
Related: Obama received two inheritances
from his grandmother, Madelyn. He made less than $1,000 from the
sale of a tax-free trust. A
second inheritance -- shares in the Bank of Hawaii where his
grandmother rose from a secretary to a vice president -- sold for
between $250,000 and $500,000.
Madelyn Dunham Burial
If you look at the image-below, you can clearly
see Michelle jumping up onto Obama.
There are only a few photos
of Obama's burial of his grandmother, Madelyn "Toot" Dunham. There
was a video on YouTube for a couple of days before it vanished. It
covered the ceremony and was taken from the viewpoint of the Ocean on
the right and the access road on the left.
Obama and sister Maya
do the "Big Lebowski" on the grandmother and turn. Obama walks
toward the access road from right to left.
Michelle was standing well back from the ceremony, near the access
road at 10 o'clock -- upper left.
As Obama walked back from the
cliffs, Michelle started running towards
the center, left and downwards to the right, intersecting Obama in the
middle of focus.
She had an ear-to-ear grin on her face -- and
jumped up on Obama, locking her legs around his middle. It's
amazing she didn't knock the little guy over. In the photo above
you can see the force of her leap spinning Obama 180°
degrees clockwise.
Her behavior was completely out of
place. Michelle was really excited and celebrating. Kinda makes you wonder
what it was that was such a wonderful delight?
Toot was the last
person alive that knew the true facts and circumstances of Obama's
birth.
The burial video has completely disappeared from the Internet,
and only Michelle knows what was in her mind at that moment.
FBI Destroyed Stanley Dunham's File
New Zeal
is reporting that the FBI destroyed a file on Barack Obama's
grandfather, the man who selected Communist
Frank Marshall Davis
to be the future president's mentor during his growing-up years in
Hawaii.
"The FBI confirms that a file was maintained on Obama's
grandfather,
Stanley
Armour Dunham," states Cliff Kincaid, the journalist who runs the
public policy group, America's Survival, Inc. (ASI). "This is a
troubling development in the effort to understand the Marxism that
drives Obama's policies as president today."
In correspondence
with Kincaid, available at
www.usasurvival.org, the FBI says the file was destroyed in 1997.
The FBI made the admission after Kincaid complied with a request to
verify the identity of Dunham and the fact that he was deceased.
Dubbed "Gramps" by Obama, Dunham has been depicted in news reports as a
patriot who served in the U.S. Army in World War II. But he had a
close relationship with Communist Party USA (CPUSA) member Frank
Marshall Davis in Hawaii, who reportedly drank and smoke pot with
Dunham.
Davis was not only a communist but a pornographer who
wrote a semi-biographical novel about having sex with a 13-year-old
girl. He mentored Obama for as many as nine years of his young
life in Hawaii.
Dunham, who was white, had picked Davis as a
mentor for Obama because he thought the youngster, whose father had
abandoned the family, needed a black role model. Davis, who was
black, fit the bill. "It was a terrible decision," Kincaid
commented. "He turned over the young Obama to a communist sex
pervert for moral guidance."
While the exact nature of the Dunham
file will be a topic for speculation, Kincaid said that is likely that
some of the information was related to Dunham's relationship with Davis.
Kincaid's ASI had previously obtained the 600-page FBI file on Davis and
posted it at www.usasurvival.org.
It shows that Davis was a key high-level operative in a Soviet-sponsored
network in Hawaii.
Obama had referred to Davis in his memoir as
merely "Frank," a poet filled with knowledge and advice. The real
identity as that of Frank Marshall Davis was disclosed by a writer for a
CPUSA publication, who said it would prove to be historically
significant, and then publicized by anti-communist New Zealand blogger
Trevor Loudon. Kincaid confirmed the identity of "Frank" with a
source in Hawaii and then obtained and posted the Davis FBI file.
However, most media, anxious to see Obama elected president,
preferred to identify Davis as a "civil rights activist" and ignore his
communist affiliations.
