History in the making today.
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CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (AFP) — US presidential front-runner Barack Obama suffered heartache Monday with the death of his grandmother, losing his last beloved link to the family who raised him, just hours from election day.
A tearful Obama, who stands on the historic threshold of becoming the first black US president, told 25,000 supporters here that Madelyn Dunham had passed away in her sleep at her Hawaii home after a long battle with cancer.
She was 86.
The Democrat lauded Dunham, who raised him when his anthropologist mother was studying in Indonesia, as one of America's "quiet heroes," and delivered an impassioned vow to work for all such heroes if elected to the White House.
The news broke on the campaign's final day as Obama blitzed through Florida and North Carolina before a concluding late-night rally in Virginia -- all Republican states that he is bidding to flip into his column.
Obama had dashed to his grandmother's side in Hawaii two weeks ago, fearing she would not live to see what polls suggest may be his triumph against Republican John McCain in Tuesday's election.
His voice thick with grief, the 47-year-old Illinois senator thanked McCain for an "incredibly gracious" statement of condolence, and said this was a "bitter-sweet time for me."
"She is going home," he said. "So there is great joy as well as tears."
Obama recapped his grandmother's life from her birth in 1922 and her marriage to his grandfather, their struggles through the Great Depression and with his infant mother through World War II.
"She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America," said Obama, who was criticized for remarking on his grandmother's latent racial prejudice after a storm over incendiary sermons by his former pastor.
"They're not famous. Their names aren't in the newspapers," he said.
"But each and every day they work hard. 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.
"And in this crowd there are a lot of quiet heroes like that, mothers and fathers, grandparents who have worked hard and sacrificed all their lives," drawing satisfaction from the hope of a better life for their own offspring.
"That's what America is about," Obama exclaimed, his voice rising to a shout as the crowd in Charlotte responded with a deafening roar.
