Obama takes campaign break to visit ill grandmother

US Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) arrives at a campaign rally at Ida Lee Park in Leesburg, Virginia, October 22, 2008.

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - Barack Obama takes a break from the presidential race on Thursday for a personal journey to see his ailing grandmother in Hawaii, ceding a day of campaigning to rival John McCain less than two weeks before the election.

Obama will spend private time in Honolulu on Friday visiting Madelyn Dunham, the woman who helped raise him and whom he affectionately calls "Toot" -- short for "tutu," the Hawaiian word for grandmother.

The 85-year-old Dunham recently broke her hip and is very ill. Obama said he did not want to repeat the mistake he made with his mother, who died of cancer before he could reach her bedside.

"We knew she wasn't doing well, but you know, the diagnosis was such that we thought we had a little more time and we didn't," Obama said of his mother's death in an interview with CBS's "Early Show" aired on Thursday. "And so I want to make sure that I don't make the same mistake twice."

The break comes as the two candidates open a final sprint to the November 4 election, with some opinion polls showing Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois, expanding his lead over Republican McCain, an Arizona senator.

After a midday rally in Indianapolis, Obama will turn his campaign plane toward Honolulu for an 11-hour trip, including a refueling stop. He will spend barely 24 hours on the ground before returning to Nevada on Friday night.

But Obama's campaign will hardly go dark in his absence. Before he leaves he will tape an ABC interview to be aired on Friday, and the relentless advertising fueled by his record-smashing fundraising will roll on.

His wife, Michelle, and running mate Joe Biden also will stay on the campaign trail.

'NO CHOICE'

Obama made the decision to return after talking to his half-sister, who has been helping to care for Dunham, adviser Robert Gibbs said.

Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University, said there was a risk in leaving the campaign trail so close to an election "but it's obviously a personal choice that will make Obama feel better and could make him a stronger candidate."

The decision to travel to his childhood home to visit a cherished relative reveals a personal side of Obama, the son of a white mother from Kansas and black father from Kenya who has been the subject of whisper campaigns and open questions about his patriotism, religion and background.

"You'd certainly rather spend the 36 hours talking to swing voters in Pennsylvania than being off the campaign trail in Hawaii, but part of a campaign is getting people to know the candidate," Zelizer said.

"Here is a guy in the middle of a campaign who is taking a moment for his family. It sends a signal about who he is."

Obama often talks on the campaign trail about both of his grandparents. His grandfather was a World War Two veteran and his grandmother worked on a bomber assembly line. They later moved to Hawaii, where she became a bank vice president.

"She's the one who taught me about hard work," he said in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination. "She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life."

But Obama featured his grandmother most prominently in a March speech on race prompted by a budding controversy over the views of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother, a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe," Obama said.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)