By Kim Chipman
Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) -- When Barack Obama referred to his grandmother as a ``typical white person,'' he was underestimating her. As a banker in 1960s Hawaii who offered her grandson one of his earliest models for overcoming barriers, Madelyn Dunham was anything but typical.
``Mrs. Dunham was one of two women in the whole bank system that were officers of any sort,'' said Jackie Berry, who began working at Bank of Hawaii under Obama's maternal grandmother more than 40 years ago.
Obama is traveling today to Honolulu, where he'll visit the woman he calls ``Toot,'' short for ``tutu,'' the Hawaiian word for grandmother. While his late grandfather, Stanley, was a gregarious wanderer and his deceased mother, Ann, an intellectually adventurous free spirit, Dunham, 85, was the steady force who kept her family grounded.
``She was the grand matriarch,'' said Maya Soetoro-Ng, 37, Obama's half-Indonesian sister who lives in Honolulu and helps take care of Dunham. ``She was the net beneath us so we could make courageous decisions in our own lives.''
Dunham still resides in the Honolulu apartment building where she and her husband helped raise Obama, 47, now the Democratic presidential candidate. That she's always rented, even though she was long involved in mortgage lending at the bank, has become a family joke.
`No Nonsense'
Dunham, raised in a strict Methodist home in Kansas, became one of Bank of Hawaii's first female vice presidents. Berry and others who worked for her say she was an exacting boss who demanded results.
``I never felt intimidated by her, but I felt I had to perform,'' Berry said in an interview earlier this year. ``She was no-nonsense.''
``She was very, very goal-oriented and moved up the ranks at the bank,'' said Representative Neil Abercrombie, a Hawaii Democrat who knew Obama's parents. ``And for a female in Hawaii at the time, let me tell you, it wasn't easy.''
That whites are a minority in Hawaii made it ``doubly difficult'' for women, said Abercrombie, 70.
On the campaign trail, Obama, who lived with his grandmother for most of his school years in Honolulu, most often mentions her work on a Boeing Co. bomber-assembly line during World War II, in part to establish a connection with veterans and show he comes from patriotic stock.
`Typical White Person'
Dunham, who turned down a request for an interview, as she routinely does, and is said to be in poor health, made headlines in March, when Obama cited her in his speech addressing race relations amid controversy over incendiary remarks by his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
``I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world,'' Obama said in the March 18 speech. ``But 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.''
Obama followed up in a radio interview by saying his grandmother was a ``typical white person,'' a comment that drew criticism on television and throughout the Internet because it was perceived by some as an insult to her and to white people.
``We all harbor stereotypes,'' Obama said later when asked about the remark. ``That doesn't make us bad people.''
Last week, Obama said spending time with his grandmother is a top priority. ``She's at an age where it's really important for me to see her,'' he told reporters.
`Pretty Conservative'
Berry said she didn't realize Obama was Dunham's grandson until early this year while watching TV.
``She was pretty conservative from my point of view so back then it would have been surprising'' to know she had a black grandson, Berry said. ``I would have thought: `I wonder what she thinks about that?'''
Madelyn Lee Payne, whose father managed an oil lease for Standard Oil Co. during the Depression, married Stanley Dunham from El Dorado, Kansas, in 1940. Stanley, who served in the Army in World War II and took his family to Hawaii shortly before Obama's parents met, ``would plunge into the thick of things without reserve,'' Soetoro-Ng said.
Madelyn Dunham was a more cautious person whose sense of humor ``fell under the radar,'' Soetoro-Ng says. Still, she credits her with showing how to break glass ceilings.
``Our grandmother, who went in as a bank teller and rose to become vice president, offered a kind of example of one who could make it without altering herself,'' she said. ``Someone who was true to herself and who earned a great deal of respect in her field.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Chipman in Honolulu at kchipman@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: August 8, 2008 00:01 EDT
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