Obama Bids Farewell to 'Toot' on Hawaiian Shore

Barack Obama said a final goodbye to his grandmother at a memorial service in Hawaii yesterday, Reuters reports. Madelyn Dunham, whom Obama affectionately called "Toot," helped raise the president-elect when his mother went to work in Indonesia. Obama left the campaign trail to rush to her bedside when she became seriously ill in October. She died of cancer just two days before he won the election.

"She's the one who taught me about hard work," Obama said of his grandmother when he accepted the Democratic nomination. "She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life." Obama scattered her ashes from the same spot on the Oahu shoreline where he scattered his mother's after her death in 1995.
(More Madelyn Dunham stories.)