Margaret Arlene Payne

Margaret Arlene Payne (1927 - June 18 2014) was a professor of nutrition. Director of the graduate program at the University of Kansas Medical Center, she was subsequently a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1980 to 1990. She was the maternal great-aunt of President Barack Obama.
Life
Born in Kansas, Payne was the daughter of Rolla and Leona McCurry Payne. She was the younger sister of Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham (1922-2008), the maternal grandmother of President Barack Obama, and Charles T. Payne (born 1925); she also had another brother, Jon V. Payne. After taking a Bachelor of Science degree in nutrition and dietetics from Kansas State University, she subsequently took a master's in nutrition research and education from Teacher's College, Columbia University. Payne then earned a doctorate in measurement and statistical analysis from the University of Chicago.
Payne began her career as a professor and director of the graduate program at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Later a consultant to the National Education Association in Washington, DC, she subsequently taught at the School of Education of the University of Missouri at Kansas City. In 1980, she accepted a position as research professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, retiring in 1990. She authored numerous articles and two books on educational curriculum and was also a consultant for several professional associations related to nutrition and educational curriculum.
While Payne maintained contact with her relatives, she kept her relationship to President Obama private. In poor health during her final years, during which her grandnephew rose to prominence, she was in a Chapel Hill nursing home at the time of his inauguration in 2009. According to her close friend and colleague, Margery Duffey, Payne was not especially impressed to be the great-aunt of a U.S. President, though she "was proud of what he did, she was proud of him. But she didn’t make anything of the fact that he was president."

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu