Education & Seattle figured in way Obama's grandmother raised her family

November 4, 9:10 AMSeattle People ExaminerLaura Vecsey

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As Americans flock to the polls today, we here in Seattle would like to mark the passing of Madelyn Dunham, the maternal grandmother of Barack Obama. She died yesterday at age 86.

This is a blue city in a state (Washington) that is set to deliver our electoral votes to the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. It is no small piece of the Obama family history that Madelyn Dunham -- who was at the top of her high school class in Kansas before marrying Barack Obama's grandfather -- cared deeply about education.

“The support she [Madelyn] provided for Stanley and her little boy was quite phenomenal,” said Marilyn O’Neill, a high school classmate of Stanley Ann’s in an excellent Hawaii Star-Bulletin interview that talks about Madelyn Dunham.

“Education was paramount for them.”

That is how Madelyn Dunham and her husband, Stanley, came to Seattle and settled down in Mercer Island for the duration of Ann Dunham's high school education. Barack Obama's mother got a first-rate education at Mercer Island High School, as the following excerpt from Wikipedia states:

Madelyn gave birth to a daughter they named Stanley Ann, who was later known as Ann, in Fort Leavenworth on November 29, 1942.^[12] With Madelyn and Stanley both working full-time, the family moved to California, Kansas, Texas, and finally settled in Seattle, Washington (on Mercer Island), where Ann graduated from high school. In El Dorado, Kansas, Stanley had managed a furniture store while Madelyn worked in restaurants. In Seattle, Stanley worked in a bigger furniture store (Standard-Grunbaum Furniture) while Madelyn eventually became vice-president of a local bank. Mercer Island was then "a rural, idyllic place," quiet, politically conservative and all white.^[8] Madelyn and Stanley attended Sunday services at the East Shore Unitarian Church in nearby Bellevue.^[8] While in Washington she attended the University of Washington.[3

We are a bookish if not wet and soggy bunch here in this Pacific Northwest city of Seattle, which has, since Ann Dunham's 1960's high school days, become a world-class city. It is a proud legacy to know that the educational history of Barack Obama includes Seattle, where many Mercer Island grads and teachers remember Barack's mother as a first-rate intellect and student. She must have gotten that from her own mother, Madelyn, whose passing yesterday at age 86 puts a bittersweet spin on this amazing story.

Some have said that Obama is another example of the American dream, especially considering the critical part of his formation, which was a dedication to education. Obama's mother and grandmother insisted on good schools, and Obama went on to Harvard, where he served as the head of the Harvard Law Review.

Seattle, like so many U.S. towns and cities, has its own quirks and flashes of nutty uniqueness, but in the end, Seattle is part of the American quilt. The ideals of teachers and parents here delivered valuable education input for a family whose biracial son has now grown up to demonstrate not only to Americans but to the world a unique ability to inspire and, we think, lead.

Obama volunteers have been busy here in Seattle these final hours towards the end of this long Election season. Oddly, we think back to the possibility that had the candidate's mother and grandmother not been so keenly committed to education and ideas and service, including those important years spent here in Seattle, what would we be voting for this Election Day?

Maybe that's why it seemed like a silly question when John McCain kept asking: Who IS Barack Obama? For some of us, the answer was not at all difficult to figure out:

Barack Obama is the grandson and son of Americans who wanted the best for their precious child and did everything they could to deliver.

For that, we say to the former Mercer Island bank vice president Madelyn Dunham, to her husband and daughter, none of whom are alive to witness this historic day:

Good work. You can surely rest in peace.

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