Obama On His Grandmother: A "Quiet Hero"

CHARLOTTE, NC – Barack Obama began his speech at a rally here tonight with brief remarks about his late grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who died at her home in Honolulu overnight after a battle with cancer.

Dunham recently turned 86, and Obama last visited her in Hawaii Oct. 23 and 24th, after learning that she was doing poorly. The senator learned of her death shortly after 8am Eastern today, the campaign said.

Calling the end of this campaign a “bittersweet moment” for him, Obama spoke about his grandmother’s life and said she was a “quiet hero.”

"Some of you heard that my grandmother, who helped raise me, passed away early this morning," he told about 25,000 people gathered on a field at UNC-Charlotte. "She has gone home and she died peacefully in her sleep with my sister at her side and, so there’s great joy as well as tears. I'm not going to talk about it took long, because it's hard a little to talk about."

He told the crowd, which had begun assembling long before he arrived and had at times braved driving rain, that he wanted everybody to know a little bit about Dunham. He talked about her birth in Kansas and said she had lived through the Great Depression and two World Wars and had worked on a bomber assembly line during WWII - parts of a story he sometimes shared on the stump over the course of the long campaign.

"She was somebody who was a very humble person and a very plainspoken person. She’s 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 everyday they work hard," he said, adding that there were a lot of quiet heroes like this in the crowd who sacrificed to give their children and grandchildren a better life, something he has said his grandmother did for him..

"That’s what America’s about," he continued. "That’s what we’re fighting for and North Carolina, in just one more day, we have the opportunity to honor all those quiet heroes all across America and all across North Carolina. We can bring change to America to make sure that their work and their sacrifice is honored. That’s what we’re fighting for!”

The senator, who spoke calmly and deliberately but appeared subdued, made several references to his grandmother, who he grew up calling "Toot," throughout his speech.

He thanked John and Cindy McCain and others for sending their thoughts and prayers.

“Now, I want to say, first of all Sen. McCain and his wife Cindy McCain issued a statement offering their condolences and they were extraordinarily gracious, I want to thank them for that," he said. "Just as I want to thank everybody else who’s been praying for us and supporting our family during this difficult time. And it’s incredibly gracious of Sen. McCain, and it’s an example of the fact that Sen. McCain has continued to serve his country honorably."

He went on to say that McCain would mean a continuation of the failed economic policies of President Bush, one of his campaign's central themes and the main thrust of his closing argument.

(NBC/NJ's ATHENA JONES)