President-elect Barack Obama gathered with family and friends on Tuesday for a private memorial service for the beloved grandmother who helped raise him.

Madelyn Payne Dunham, known to her friends as “Toot”, died Nov. 2, two days before Obama won election to become the nation’s first African-American president. She was 86.

Obama did not speak to reporters at the small home that had been converted into the First Unitarian Church in  Nuuanu. Aides said Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and her husband, Konrad Ng, also were present.

Following the ceremony, Obama drove to the Lanai Lookout. He and about 20 members of his family climbed over a stone wall and down onto rocky ledges to scatter Dunham’s ashes.

Obama earlier this year left flowers at the same cliffs, in memory of his mother.