RALPH WALDO EMERSON DUNHAM
'If you love your kids, they feel it'
He was named for one of America's greatest poets and essayists, but Barack Obama's great-grandfather Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham never cared for his name.
"He really didn't like it that much," said Virginia Goeldner, 72, one of Dunham's daughters. "It embarrassed him."
Dunham was an outdoorsman who liked to fish and hunt. He raised German shepherds for shows. But he had a tender side.
(Courtesy Virginia Goeldner)
"He said, 'If you love your kids, they feel it.' "
Goeldner's mother was Dunham's second wife. His first wife -- Obama's great-grandmother -- took her own life in 1926. Obama's grandfather, then just 8, found her body. After his wife's suicide, Dunham sent his two sons to live with his mother- and father-in-law.
Dunham was born in Kansas on Christmas Day, 1894.
"I can remember Daddy talking about going hunting with his brothers, and Grandma would cook it," Goeldner said. "She would cook rabbits or the stuff they shot."
LIke most of his family, Dunham worked in the aircraft industry in Wichita, Kansas, which touted itself as "The Air Capital of the World" in the early 20th century.
Dunham worked in the tooling department of Boeing Aircraft Co.
"He never laid a hand on any of his kids," said Goeldner. "It wasn't like he would tell you what you should do. You did what you knew he wanted you to do just to make him pleased."