Obama tears up in a tribute to his 'hero'

Madelyn Dunham, the 86-year-old grandmother who helped raise Obama and was ill with cancer, died early Monday in Honolulu, just hours shy of an election he had prayed she would survive to witness.

"Look, she has gone home," Obama said, his voice hoarse. "And she died peacefully in her sleep with my sister at her side, and so there's great joy as well as tears."

"I want everybody to know, though, a little bit about her," he went on. "Her name was Madelyn Dunham, and she was born in Kansas, a small town, in 1922, which means that she lived through the Great Depression. She lived through two world wars. She watched her husband go off to war, while she looked after a baby and worked on a bomber assembly line."

"She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America, who -- they're not famous, their names aren't in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard," he said. "They look after their families. They sacrifice for their children and their grandchildren. They aren't seeking the limelight. All they try to do is just do the right thing."