Since January, more than a dozen news organizations from around the globe, from the BBC to TV Asahi to People magazine, have dispatched reporters to Oahu. And a young, iconoclastic white woman who had defied the social mores of the day by marrying a dashing black man from Kenya was coping with the fact that her new husband essentially had abandoned her and their young child in 1963 to study at Harvard. Obama, his mother and new baby sister, Maya, moved into a small apartment near the school's sprawling, lush campus. So far, this process has not yielded anything especially damaging to Obamas candidacy. For the past two weeks, he has been recharging on Oahu after an unpleasant year in the job. And they have cheered Obama on even when they disagreed with him. Now they mainly just golf more than 30 hours in six outings this vacation and trash-talk, just like in the old days. Meanwhile, the search continues for Obamas closest high school friends -- the self-proclaimed Basketball Jones, who raced around the island in Darin Maurers two-toned beige VW van with the band Earth, Wind and Fire blaring from the cassette deck. 00:53 GMT 31 Dec 2014 He recently played golf with his boyhood friend on a return to Hawaii, and the president also invited him to his 49th birthday party in. "It's their world, all right," Ray supposedly shouts at Obama. He describes making friends easily, becoming fluent in Indonesian in just six months and melding quite easily into the very foreign fabric of Jakarta. He is 9 years old, living in Indonesia, where he and his mother moved with her new husband, Lolo Soetoro, a few years earlier. She became estranged from her husband, Barack Obama Sr., after his departure for Harvard and rarely saw the group of friends that they had made at the University of Hawaii. Many of the men were black. The comments below have not been moderated, By A close friend and track teammate of Kakugawa, John Hagar, also said he was surprised by Obama's description of the character representing Kakugawa as an angry young black man. You are extremely sweet and foxy, he wrote. But the reality felt far different for the handful of African-Americans attending classes there. Half the homes were old bamboo huts; half, including the Soetoro house, were nicer, with brick or concrete and red-tiled roofs. Wed drive around in my van listening to Earth, Wind & Fire and looking for places to play, he said. "Junkie. Vanity Fair is coming soon. Adept at nailing long jump shots, Obama was called "Barry O'Bomber" by teammates. Another story put forth in "Dreams" as one of Obama's pivotal moments of racial awakening checks out essentially as he wrote it. Allman said the two couples sipped Champagne before going to the dance, and then an after-party. President Obama may have had a tough couple of weeks, but newly-released images will remind him of his more carefree days. It can be very racially hostile, especially if youre white or black. Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb, and Greg Orme-friends from Obama's high school daze in Hawaii-joined the president for a round on the links at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Saturday morning. Made a strong case for them.. He even scored a basket," he said. Though Orme spent most afternoons with Obama and considered him one of his closest friends, he said Obama never brought up issues of race, never talked about feeling out of place at Punahou. "We'd all do things together, but Obama was never there," Smith said, adding that they often brought along the few other black underclassmen. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man," Obama wrote in "Dreams." He was loving and generous." If Obama did show flashes of anger or hurt, according to friends and teammates, it sprang from his lack of minutes on the basketball court more than his angst as a young black man in a multiracial society. He came across an article that he later would describe as feeling like an "ambush attack." Mr. Ramos was a year ahead of Mr. Obamas Punahou class of 79, but played with him on the basketball team. A close friend of Obama's from their teenage years, Greg Orme, spent so much time with Dunham that he, too, called him "Gramps." As Obama's senior year drew to a close, his mother sent him letters from afar, about life in Indonesia and her work there with non-profit groups doing economic development. Obama was also known on campus for his basketball skills, and was sometimes called 'Barry O'bomber' for his jump shot. He showed leadership and caring for his teammates, McLachlin said. 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He played several rounds on the nine-hole course with Bobby Titcomb and Greg Orme, childhood friends from Hawaii who flew in to meet the president. Throughout his youth, as depicted in his first book, he always found ways to meld into even the most uninviting of communities. Franklin D. Roosevelt made frequent trips back to Hyde Park, N.Y., throwing picnics or barbecues for former neighbors and friends, and George H.W. It was also how he wanted to be remembered. Barack Obama as a sophomore with the junior varsity basketball team at Punahou School, Honolulu, in 1977. The foursome, according to the Associated Press, teed off with another eight players. I really admire that.. Most of his teachers and friends express sorrow that they did not know of Obamas racial anguish or inner demons. remembered Ati Kisjanto, 45. They sought out parties, especially at the military bases on the island, where African-Americans would be in attendance. In his best-selling autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," Obama describes having heated conversations about racism with another black student, "Ray." But it has revealed the vagaries of memory, as well as the ambivalent emotions stirred among old acquaintances when someone they once knew becomes famous. For a reputed loner, Mr. Obama has remained remarkably close to a trio he met as a teenager at Honolulus prestigious Punahou School boys of Hawaiis year-round summer with whom he played basketball, bodysurfed, drank beer and, like so many other young islanders in the 1970s, smoked pot, the choom of that long-ago nickname. In an interview with the Tribune on Saturday, Kakugawa said he always considered himself mixed race, like so many of his friends in Hawaii, and was not an angry young black man. You need to find Greg Orme, instructed Obamas old basketball coach, Chris McLachin. Left: Kelli Allmans OAHUAN 1979 Yearbook. Barack in the Student Life section of Punahou Schools yearbook. "Looking back now, I'd say he really is kind of the perfect combination of all of them," said his half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. Instead we are producing Richard Nixons." As he listened, McLachlin never dreamed that one day this determined young man, who had spent most of that season warming the bench while the Punahou High School varsity basketball team was marching on to win the Hawaii state championship, would grow up to be Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. Bobby Titcomb Photos Photos - US President Barack Obama repares to putt on the 18th green as friend Greg Orme retrieves his ball and Darell Harrington (2nd R) and Bobby Titcomb (R) look on at the . As the president's motorcade left the golf course at 3:58 p.m . HONOLULU (AP) The Latest on President Barack Obama family vacation in Hawaii (all times local): 10 p.m. President Barack Obama and his family dined with friends Wednesday night to cap off another day of their Hawaii getaway. In the second term, presidents have often sought refuge from the pressure by disappearing into nature to fish or hunt, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. Obama has claimed on numerous occasions to have become fluent in Indonesian in six months. He thanked "Tut and Gramps," his nicknames for Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, but didn't mention his faraway mother. But we never talked race." Mr. Titcomb was golfing with the president within hours of the Obamas Dec. 21 arrival on Oahu. Those of us who were black did feel isolated--there's no question about that." 'You are extremely sweet and foxy, I don't know why Greg would want to spend any time with me at all!' Isnt that sweet? she asked. Known as Ann throughout her adult life, she kept to herself. The havoc time wreaks on fashion spares no one, not even the president of the United States.In a newly unearthed photo published Thursday in TIME magazine, a 17-year-old Barack Obama is seen. I am in poor health.. Hes off the grid, said Hale, who is now the schools head basketball coach. You gotta give him that.. Like Obama, Topolinski had to straddle a racial divide. He attended a college basketball game with the first family the next day, and this week he and his wife hosted their annual barbecue for the other families, including those of the Obamas Chicago friends Eric Whitaker and Marty Nesbitt. Their Jakarta neighborhood resembled a village more than the bustling metropolis the city is today. We had to prove ourselves, focus on playing good ball. Once content to join their parents for outings to the aquarium or to get shave ice, Sasha and Malia are now more independent. In a new introduction to the reissued edition of "Dreams," he noted that the dangers of writing an autobiography included "the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer [and] selective lapses of memory." In the book, Obama discusses race and racism at his high school with one other Punahou student, "Ray,'' the young black man described in detail in "Dreams" as perpetually angry at the white world around him. The Obamas attended a luau on Oahu's North Shore at the home of the president's childhood friend Bobby Titcomb, spending more than six hours at the gathering. After a recent lunch with a reporter, he winked at a table of faculty-lounge colleagues and joked, This one is with Playgirl.. When his mother, a woman said to have been born with a keen sense of wanderlust, announced she was returning to Indonesia, Obama, then a teenager, asked to stay in Hawaii, according to Soetoro-Ng, 36, who still lives in Honolulu. Now lots of people are interested in helping graduates of Punahou School jog their foggy memories, trolling for revelations about a young man who spent much of his time that season riding the bench. I loved his game," he said. Having their back. ', The comments below have not been moderated, President Obama waves his veto pen in the face of incoming Republican majority, Americans again name Hillary Clinton the most admired woman in the world and Obama the most admired man (and Princess Kate outranks Elizabeth Warren), Secret Service agents blame White House security lapses on post-9/11 demands to protect more people with less money but lawmakers say agency has been unaccountable for years, Military couple 'not at all' upset that President Obama's golf game had them booted from Hawaii course hours before their weddingas groom boasts he could beat his boss at golf, Pavement where disabled woman gestured at cyclist before fatal crash, TN residents say Jack Daniel's distillery spews black mold, Incredible footage of Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russians in Bakhmut, Pro-Ukrainian drone lands on Russian spy planes exposing location, 'Buster is next!' Memories of a racial awakening? They were. We all come from so many backgrounds, we have to get along., Obamas teammates for the most part are careful not to judge an old friend, even if his memories of racial attitudes at Punahou differ from their own. Obama is spending the weekend golfing with Punahou School friends Greg Orme, Bobby Titcomb and Mike Ramos ahead of a summit of Southeast Asian leaders at the Sunnylands estate in Rancho. "Suddenly we asked, `Where's Barry?' And from the first day of 5th grade right up until his graduation in 1979, the young man was one of only a small number of black students at a school heavily populated by the children of Hawaii's wealthy, most of them white and Asian. The perfect tummy control bodysuit, a popcorn gadget, more bestsellers starting at $8. He would bring up worldly topics far beyond his years. In one family photo before the mother and son moved to Indonesia, Obama walks barefoot on Waikiki Beach, arms outstretched as though embracing the entire beautiful life around him. Most classmates and teachers recall an easygoing, slightly chunky young man, with the same infectious smile he sports today. Some of the Betawi children threw rocks at the open Catholic classrooms, remembered Cecilia Sugini Hananto, who taught Obama in 2nd grade. Hawaii is a melting pot, a very intense place if youre a kid. "But it could be a lonely place. We have this tradition to head home to Hawaii for Christmas. While Obama's prom photographs have never been seen before, details have previously emerged about his high school years. "I imagine other black children, then and now, undergoing similar moments of revelation," Obama wrote of the magazine photos in "Dreams." What Obama and his companions talk about during their many hours alone is anyone's guess. ', 'I'd made my share of friends at school, gone on the occasional awkward date,' Obama wrote, 'And if I sometimes puzzled over the mysterious realignments of status that took place among my classmates, as some rose and others fell depending on the whims of their bodies or the make of their cars, I took comfort in the knowledge that my own position had steadily improved.'. McLachlin said he survived a severe stroke shortly before Obama was elected president in 2008. Furushima paused, then sighed, pointing out how the potential president was prone to drawing a little Afro atop the B and the O on his signature. The three men Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb and Greg. I get one, maybe.. I am not giving any interviews, Obamas grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, curtly interjected when a reporter phoned. "He would protect the smaller ones." The Secret Service stopped a man who briefly flew a drone near the president's motorcade Monday as the president and his friends were returning from golf at the Mid-Pacific Country Club. In 2011, he pleaded no contest to soliciting a prostitute, but Obama has stayed fiercely loyal to his childhood friend. Hes exhibited class and dignity all the way through it. He made an appointment to see me one day and he brought along a couple other guys who wanted more playing time, Chris McLachlin recalled. The photos appear in the new issue of TIME, which hits news stands Friday. I guarantee he would have won a third term if he could have run again. His character, the way he conducts himself, thats always been his footprint. Third-grade teacher Fermina Katarina Sinaga, now 67, has perhaps the most telling story. And he frequently made peace--even allies--with the very people who angered him most. The three men - Mike Ramos (right), Bobby Titcomb (not pictured) and Greg Orme (left) - are among the few people still in Obama's life who knew him long before he was famous. "Luckily he could swim. Greg Orme, a fellow varsity basketball player, was Obama's constant companion. But Obama did get to play in the game when the school clinched the state title. So far, the candidacy of the man known by his high school friends as Barry Obama has been good for the Hawaii economy and bad for newsroom budgets. (AFP OUT) U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and friend Greg Orme (R) wait to warm up on the driving range to play golf with friends December 29, 2008 in Kailua, Hawaii. Obamas prom pictures released. I dont want to accuse her of stealing it, but it was on the table when she arrived and it wasnt when she left, said Furushima. In a newly unearthed photo published Thursday in TIME magazine, a 17-year-old Barack Obama is seen wearing a white dinner jacket as he poses with friends on the night of their senior prom in Hawaii. Titcomb and Orme are part of a group of Obama's friends who reunite in Hawaii every year, a practice that continued even after Obama became president. "Like being black was a funny costume in and of itself," recalled Smith, now a doctor who specializes in geriatrics in California. Every time out hed come over and chat with me about my stroke, my health, he said. College would be his next stop. Likewise for Mr. Obama, it seems. Alan Lum, who later would coach the basketball team at Punahou as well as teach elementary school there, recalled Obama as always being the first to confront coaches when he felt they were not fairly allotting playing time. Hes not like that.. These previously unpublished photos, obtained exclusively by TIME from Obama's schoolmate Kelli Allman (ne McCormack), show a 17-year-old Barack Obama on the night of his senior prom.. The Hawaii holidays became more and more appealing, he said in an interview just after he began his run for president. Bendix added that he was not shocked when Obama was elected president. Once parked, they 'turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult and Stevie Wonder, lit up some sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds and washed it down with green bottled beer (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl).'. I remember when we were seniors in high school, somebody said Barry would be on the Supreme Court, he said. Allman said Obama didn't date a lot in high school but had plenty of charm. In fact, it is surprising, based on interviews with more than two dozen people who knew Obama during his nearly four years in Indonesia, that it would take a photograph in a magazine to make him conscious of the fact that some people might treat him differently in part because of the color of his skin. Mr. Orme was unable to travel to Hawaii for the recent holiday, but the others called him twice. News. TIME Magazine obtained and published this picture of President Obama the night of his senior prom in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1979, from his classmate Kelli Allman. A member of the varsity squad, though not a starter, Obama and his teammates brought Punahou the state championship in 1979, his senior year. Life without a father It was a complicated time. While Obama got saddled with the nickname Barry OBomber, Maurer said he also "got teased a lot for taking hard to make shots.". From left: Greg Orme, Kelli Allman, Barack Obama and Megan Hughes at Allmans parents house in Honolulu. But one word Obama learned quickly in his new home was curang, which means "cheater." These have been the stories told about the first two character-shaping decades of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's life, a story line largely shaped by his own best-selling memoir, political speeches and interviews. Right: Obama wrote the above note in Allmans yearbook at the end of his senior year in 1979. A youth living in a distant land searches and finds new friends, a new language and a heartbreaking lesson about his identity in the pages of an American magazine. Mr. Obama and the others often would visit family members there at Christmas and on occasion the men would meet, but it was not until 2004 that they agreed to gather annually. "He'd go right up to the coach during a game and say, `Coach, we're killing this team. Then his young mother, now divorced, met and married an Indonesian student studying at the University of Hawaii. If someone is brown, they can be Samoan or Fijian or Tongan. "They held his hands and feet and said, `One, two, three,' and threw him in the swamp," recalled Adi, who still lives in the same house where he grew up. This is the Barry I remember.. President-elect Barack Obama and friend Greg Orme wait to warm up on the driving range to play golf with friends December 29, 2008 in Kailua, Hawaii.. President-elect Barack Obama hugs friend Greg Orme before a round of golf December 29, 2008 at the Mid Pacific Country Club in Kailua, Hawaii. With his friends, he would drive the Choomwagon, a Volkswagen microbus, to Mount Tantalus, biographer David Maraniss wrote. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. For the president to be able to be with a group where he can be absolutely relaxed a group that knows him from his youth on, and who he knows are friends with him not because of what he became, but because of who he is is a really comforting and warm thing, said David Axelrod, Mr. Obamas longtime strategist. The sailboat the Manu Kai (bird of the sea, in English) is about to set sail behind him. The photos and interviews are in the new issue of TIME, which is out on Friday. As you know, he made getting better health care for Americans one of his missions.. Hes kind of in and out. Tucked away in someone elses shoe box of adolescent artifacts, there might be a picture of you in garish clothes and with an outdated do, your arm around a high school squeeze. Allman also gaveTIME a snapshot of Obamas yearbook entry to her. The White House says Obama teed off Saturday at the nine-hole course at the Sunnylands retreat in Rancho Mirage with childhood friends Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme and Michael Ramos. Still, all of his teachers at the Catholic school recognized leadership qualities in him. Obama and his. Arkansas is filled with people still burned from their interactions with the national news media, which descended on the state during Bill Clintons 1992 campaign and stayed for his presidency, continuing to poke and prod at his business and personal dealings. McLachlin said he told Obama he was volunteering for the American Heart Association and the president urged him to keep in touch. Although the Choom Gang has come to define Mr. Obamas high school circle owing partly to the presidents memoir, Dreams From My Father, and a notation that Mr. Obama made in his senior yearbook thanking the group for good times Mr. Ramos said in an interview after leaving Oahu this week that the phrase does not describe their circle. The 1979 photo was snapped inside the home of former classmate, Kelli Allman, who was the prom date of the pr, Fashion alert! They were like brothers, says Allman. The pretty blonde on the right was the future president's prom date. You had three part-Hawaiians, one Filipino and me., But Hale said he is still enjoying the novelty of a famous classmate. Topolinski said neither he nor Obama were stars on their high school team. I dont know why people have slammed him like that, said Maurer. Marty Nesbitt, one of Obama's friends from . For most of their high school years, Orme and Obama lived and loved basketball, even if their hours of practice never translated into much playing time on game day. The President of the United States is no different. He always made time to see his old coach I didnt play him as much as I should have and he had every right to say 'Ill show you coach.' He knew the really small apartment that Mr. Obama lived in with his grandparents and what a talker Gramps was. Titcomb, who golfed another two days with Obama this month before the others got into town, was a year behind Obama at Punahou. The term wasn't considered a slur at the time in Indonesia. Since returning to his childhood home this month on vacation, President Barack Obama has spent a good part of most days cloistered with three people whose company puts him at ease. Obama confirmed in an interview earlier this month that the Ray character in "Dreams" actually is Kakugawa. But asked what he believes Obamas biggest accomplishment was, he had a ready answer. They compose notes to friends and family and include photos or quotes that best represent them. As is usual when on the island, the president has been far from political advisers and hangers-on, and has instead spent time with the high school friends who have come to be known collectively, if inaccurately, as the Choom Gang. Far less is known about Obama's buddies, of course, than about the president himself. Its good for me, pre-Alzheimers, to try and remember this stuff, he said, struggling to recall something other than Obamas love for basketball and his improbable hook shot. But he took the high road and showed a lot of integrity. "But looking back now I can see he was seeking more from those guys than that. He laughed and posed for photos with friends. While Obama rocketed to political prominence, his friend headed down the troubled road Obama had feared he was following. Obama wrote in the lengthy yearbook note. In one photo he hugs his beaming sister. They're not his wife and daughters, who came with him, but a trio of pals whose friendship dates back to Obama's high school days in Hawaii. Topolinski laughed when he recalled how they both tried out for the schools football team. "At the time, it was about basketball," said Orme, who has remained friends with Obama over the years and who plays basketball with him almost every Christmas when the two return to Hawaii to visit family. He sketched decidedly American cartoon characters during class. 21:01 GMT 31 Dec 2014. If only I had saved that Nerf hoop we used to dunk on. She said a woman from People came to visit with her and then walked away with the Punahou reunion list and all its phone numbers. Hes been so gracious to him.. Dan Hale, the 6-foot-7-inch star center of the 1979 Punahou basketball team, said Obamas depiction of Hawaii as a place where race really mattered hardly resonates with him. So far, it has been a narrative spun almost entirely on Obamas terms and in his own words -- most prominently in his bestselling memoir, Dreams From My Father.. "He didn't say what country he wanted to be president of. Teachers, former playmates and friends recall a boy who never fully grasped their language and who was very quiet as a result. "I never picked up on that," Hagar said. They got back in touch when she visited New York in 1982, before continuing a long-distance relationship that eventually fizzled out, according to his biographer David Maraniss. Electricity had arrived only a couple of years earlier. Standing up for your buddies. With a trimmed Afro, Hawaiian flower leis around his neck, Obama was surrounded by the disparate people who shaped him. "I did say we were playing in their world," he explained, "but that had nothing to do with race. He was the only foreign child in the neighborhood. I hadnt seen him for 30 years.. A high school friend has shared photographs of Obama at his prom night withTIME magazine - as well as a very friendly note he penned in her yearbook, in which he calls her 'sweet and foxy'. In his poem, An Old Man, there are glimpses of a tortured adolescent as well as a budding orator. Obama and his mother joined her new husband, a kind man who later would become a detached heavy drinker and womanizer, family members in Indonesia say. The real Ray, Keith Kakugawa, is half black and half Japanese. And while they did enjoy marijuana, Mr. Ramos acknowledged, we played a lot more basketball than we smoked pot.. Maybe we could have helped him. Obama devotes many words in his book to exploring his outsider status at Punahou. His partners matched Monday's team of Greg Orme, Darrell Harrington and Bobby Titcomb, and the foursome spent more than five hours on the course. Obama spent the weekend in California after meeting Friday at a resort with Jordan's king. Yet even Obama has acknowledged the limits of memoir. Daily Mail Reporter, Images show Obama ahead of his prom night in Honolulu in 1979, The Obamas to return to Martha's Vineyard? They're not his wife and daughters, who came with him, but a trio of pals whose friendship dates back to Obama's high school days in Hawaii. "I brood," Mr. Obama's friend Mr. Ramos said a few years ago.
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