• Barack Obama's mother is Ann Dunham. She was born on November 29, 1942
in Wichita, Kansas, to Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. Ann attended the University of
Hawaii, where she met Barack Obama Sr. The two were married in 1960 and gave birth to
Barack Jr. in 1961. In 1963 the couple divorced and Ann Obama then married oil manager
Lolo Soetoro, another University of Hawaii student from Indonesia. In 1967, when
Soetoro's student visa was revoked because of political unrest in Indonesia, Dunham and
Barack, then in first grade, accompanied him back to Jakarta where Obama's half-sister,
Maya Soetoro was born. Four years later Barack Obama Jr. was sent back to the United
States to be raised by her parents. Ann succumbed to ovarian cancer on November 7th,
1995.
Barack Obama Jr. with his mother Ann Dunham Obama
Barack Obama Jr. with his mother, Indonesian step-father Lolo Soetoro,
and his sister Maya Soetoro in Jakarta Indonesia in 1970
• Obama’s father is Barack Hussein Obama Sr., economist, born in Alego,
Siaya District, Kenya in 1936. He met Ann Dunham while a student at the East-West Center
of the University of Hawaii. The couple married in 1960 and divorced in 1963 when Obama
was two years old.
Barack Hussein Obama Sr. died in a car crash in Nairobi, Kenya in 1982, leaving three
wives, six sons and a daughter, all but one of his children live in Britain or the United
States. He is buried in the village of his birth.
Barack Obama Sr.
Barack Obama Sr.
• Barack Obama’s maternal grandfather is Stanley Armour Dunham, born on
March 23, 1918 in Kansas, Missouri. At age 8 he found the body of his mother, Ruth
Armour Dunham, who had committed suicide at age 26. He worked on oil rigs during the
Great Depression and served in the Army during World War II. He had an itch for
adventure, moving his family from Kansas to Texas to Washington state and finally to
Hawaii where he worked as a furniture salesman. He died on February 8, 1992 in Honolulu,
Hawaii and is buried in Punchbowl National Cemetery, Honolulu, Hawaii.
• Barack Obama’s maternal grandmother is Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham, born
in October 1922 in Wichita, Kansas. She worked on a bomber assembly line during the war
and as vice-president of a bank. She passed away on the eve of the of the Presidential
Election, November 3rd,2008 in Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii at the age of 86.
Barack Obama Jr. with his maternal grandparents at his high school graduation.
Barack Obama Jr. with his grandparents Madelyn and Stanley Dunham.
• Obama’s paternal grandfather is Hussein Onyango Obama. He was born in
1895 in Kenya and died in 1979. |
