Barack Obama called his maternal grandmother a "quiet hero" today in Charlotte, N.C. in his first remarks following Madelyn Dunham's death of cancer this morning in Honolulu.

"Some of you heard that my grandmother who helped raise me passed away early this morning," Obama said to supporters. "She has gone home. 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 too long because it's hard to talk about. I want everybody to know, though, about her. Her name is Madelyn Dunham. She was born in Kansas in a small town in 1922, which means she lived through the Great Depression, she lived through two world wars" and later worked on an assembly line, building bombers.

Obama called Dunham "a very humble person and a very plain-spoken person."

She was like other "quiet heroes we have all across America," Obama said. "They're not famous. Their names aren't in the newspaper. But each and every day, they work hard. They watch out for their families. They sacrifice for their families. ... That's what America's about. That's what we're fighting for."