CHARLOTTE (North Carolina), Nov 4: US presidential front-runner Barack Obama suffered heartache on 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.

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.

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 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 the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility,” Obama and his half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, who was at Dunham’s bedside, said in a joint statement.

“Our debt to her is beyond measure.” The news rippled through the large crowd waiting patiently in driving rain for Obama’s Charlotte rally.

“He’s going to be president thanks to her blessings,” said Kenyan-born Charlotte resident Nelly Wavinya, 40.

She said: “It would have been easy to be distracted, but he’s going to go forward for his grandmother, for his mother and for the American people.”—AFP