Barack Obama's mother and grandmother were impressing people in Honolulu long before he entered the world stage as a political leader.

His grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, blazed a trail for women at Honolulu's top bank during the 1960s and 1970s. In December 1970, Dunham was named one of the first two female vice presidents at Bank of Hawaii.

And shadows of Obama's attitude to economic and foreign policy also can be traced to the research his mother conducted decades ago through the University of Hawai'i. Stanley Ann Dunham, who died of cancer in 1995, earned her doctorate at UH while helping craftsmen in Indonesia and Africa get small loans to improve their lives and their villages, and ended up becoming an expert in "micro lending."

Her approach was to understand the issues, the people and the implications of any attempts to change their economic situation.

The men in young Obama's life were less successful by conventional standards — at least in Honolulu.

His father, former UH student Barack H. Obama, left Hawai'i when young "Barry" was just 2 and his parents divorced in 1963.

Dunham later fell in love with a Javanese candidate for a UH master's degree in geography named Soetoro Martodihardjo, who went by the Javanese nickname, "Lolo" Soetoro. They married in 1965, and Soetoro took Dunham and first-grader Obama back to Indonesia at a time of political unrest following the overthrow of President Sukarno.

The Dutch had ceded Western New Guinea to Indonesia, and geographer Lolo Soetoro returned to map the new divide between Eastern Guinea, which was under British/Australian control, and the Western portion.

He later got a job with Union Oil and joked to people back at UH that Dunham was falling in love with Javanese handcrafts while he was becoming an American oil man.

They divorced in 1979.

Obama's grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, served as a sergeant in Patton's 7th Army in Europe during World War II.

He was a charismatic figure who liked to drink and loved to tell stories but struggled to make a living selling furniture and insurance in Honolulu.

It was clear, however, that Dunham — whom Obama called "Gramps" — was the primary male figure in Obama's young life and bragged to anyone who would listen about his grandson's accomplishments.

While Obama returned from Indonesia at age 10 to live with his grandparents on Beretania Street, his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, was home-schooled by her mother in Indonesia.

Mother and daughter returned to Honolulu in 1973 and, for three years, lived with Obama on Poki Street, just 'ewa of Punahou School.

Dunham returned to Indonesia with young Maya in 1976 to live with Soetoro's mother and work on her marriage. Soetoro-Ng continued to be homeschooled by Dunham until 1981, when Maya enrolled at the Jakarta International School.

At age 14 she, too, returned to Honolulu in 1984 to enter Punahou School, where Obama had graduated from in 1979.

Soetoro-Ng now teaches at La Pietra-Hawai'i School For Girls and has a young daughter with her husband, Konrad Ng.