Stanley Armour Dunham

Stanley Armour Dunham was born on March 23, 1918, in Wichita, Kansas. He was the younger of two sons born to Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham, Sr., and Ruth Lucille Armour. His paternal ancestors settled in Kempton, Indiana, in the 1840s before moving to Kansas. Dunham’s parents married on October 3, 1915, in Wichita, where they operated The Travelers' Cafe located on William Street between the firehouse and the Wichita City Hotel.

At age 8, on November 25, 1926, Dunham discovered his mother's body following her suicide. After this event, his father placed him and his older brother, Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham Jr., in the care of their maternal grandparents in El Dorado, Kansas. During his teenage years, Dunham reportedly exhibited rebellious behavior, including punching his high school principal and drifting across states by hopping rail cars to Chicago, California, and back.

He married Madelyn Lee Payne on May 5, 1940, the night of her senior prom.

During World War II, Dunham enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army on January 18, 1942, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He served in the European Theatre with the 1830th Ordnance Supply and Maintenance Company, Aviation, supporting the Ninth Air Force during D-Day. Six weeks after the Normandy invasion, Dunham and his brother were deployed to France. An incident during deployment included an accidental meeting in London, where Dunham was searching for rations and encountered his brother Ralph.

In November 1942, Madelyn Dunham gave birth to their daughter, Stanley Ann Dunham, later known as Ann, in Wichita. During the war, Madelyn worked on a Boeing B-29 assembly line in Wichita. Dunham completed two years of military service in Europe and was discharged on August 30, 1945.

After the war, the Dunham family moved to Berkeley, California, to pursue studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Subsequently, they returned to El Dorado, Kansas, where Dunham managed a furniture store. In 1955, the family moved to Seattle, Washington, with Dunham working as a salesman for the Standard-Grunbaum Furniture Company. During this period, his daughter Ann attended middle school, and the family resided in an apartment in the Wedgwood Estates neighborhood.

In 1956, the Dunhams relocated to the Shorewood Apartments on Mercer Island, a suburb of Seattle, where Ann attended high school until her graduation in 1960. In 1957, Dunham began working for the Doces Majestic Furniture Company.

Later, the family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where Dunham pursued opportunities in the furniture business. Madelyn Dunham started working at the Bank of Hawaii in 1960 and became one of the bank’s first female vice presidents in 1970. The Dunham family settled in Honolulu when Dunham found a better employment opportunity in the furniture retail sector.

Barack Obama, Dunham’s grandson, recalls childhood memories of sitting on his grandfather’s shoulders during the arrival of Apollo astronauts at Hickam Air Force Base. At age 10, Obama moved to Honolulu to live with the Dunhams while his mother and stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, resided in Indonesia. His mother returned to Hawaii later to undertake graduate studies but eventually went back to Indonesia in 1977, while Obama remained in the United States with his grandparents.

Stanley Armour Dunham died on February 8, 1992, in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is interred at the Punchbowl National Cemetery.

Dunham’s ancestry includes direct descent from Jonathan Singletary Dunham, an early American settler who established the first gristmill in New Jersey after leaving Plymouth Colony. His paternal grandmother was Mary Ann (Kearney) Dunham, whose family migrated from Moneygall, County Offaly, Ireland, during the Great Irish Famine. Dunham’s distant relatives include six U.S. presidents: James Madison, Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. He is also related to the legendary gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok through ancestral connections.

His lineage also traces back to numerous prominent historical figures, including Charlemagne and various kings of Wales and Ireland, as well as biblical kings and Pharaohs, reflecting an extensive ancestral history that spans multiple centuries and regions.