HAWAI'I KAI — President Elect Barack Obama spent much of today honoring the memory of the grandmother who raised him and then scattering her ashes at LÅna'i Lookout, the same spot where Obama scattered the ashes of his mother after her death in 1995.

The White House press corps that's traveling with Obama on his third O'ahu visit of the year was not allowed into the First Unitarian Church for an hour-long service in memory of Madelyn Dunham, who died of cancer at the age of 86 just two days before Obama's presidential victory.

And media were not allowed to accompany Obama, his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, her husband, and Obama's immediate family of wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia as they picked their way down to LÅna'i Lookout and its wave-swept, rocky shoreline today afternoon.

It's the same spot where Obama scattered the ashes of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, after she died of cancer at the age of 53.

During a family vacation in August, Obama returned to LÅna'i Lookout to toss a lei into the ocean in memory of his mother.

While local and national media were kept away today, Lauray Gouveia of Kaimuki managed to snap several photos of the Obama entourage of about 12 people that visited the lookout for 20 minutes.

Gouveia suffered her own health scare in May when she came down with pneumonia and sympathized with Obama's emotions.

"To lose someone that close, I felt his pain," she said.

Gouveia wanted to be close to Obama and capture his image, but would not allow herself to photograph him scattering his grandmother's ashes.

"It's too personal," she said. "It's pono. You've got to do the right thing."

Although Secret Service and other law enforcement kept shooing Gouveia away, she persisted.

"I wanted to see someone who's going to help us help ourselves to make some serious changes," she said. "Thinking about it, it's just chicken skin. Man, does he have a job-and-a-half to do."

Dunham and her husband, Stanley Dunham, raised Obama in their two-bedroom, 10th-floor apartment on Beretania Street while his mother traveled and pursued her graduate studies in Indonesia with his sister.

Obama called his grandmother "Toot," after the Hawaiian name for grandparent, tutu. Her husband, Stanley Dunham, was "gramps." The ashes of Stanley Dunham — a sergeant in Patton's 7th Army in Europe — are inurned at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.

Madelyn Dunham was suffering from osteoporosis and cancer when she fell in her apartment and broke her hip in early October.

Within days, Obama's campaign announced his sudden decision to cancel appearances during his presidential campaign so he could make the long flight home to visit Dunham.

Family friends at the time said Obama did not want to relive his experience in 1995, when he arrived too late to say goodbye to his mother.

He had been raised by both of his maternal grandparents: Stanley — the gregarious and fun-loving pal, who struggled to sell furniture and then insurance on O'ahu; and Madelyn, the stern, no-nonsense banking executive who draped young Barack in equal parts Kansas values and grandmotherly love.

During his campaign for the presidency, Obama's grandmother represented the last close adult figure from his childhood after already losing his mother, father and grandfather.

In his first public comments after Dunham's death, Obama told a crowd in Charlotte, N.C. that she was a "quiet hero."

"Some of you heard that my grandmother who helped raise me passed away early this morning," Obama said to supporters after her death. "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."

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."