", Every day after practice hed stay to play pickup games against the coaching staff," he said. In an essay about what he wanted to be when he grew up, Obama "wrote he wanted to be president," Sinaga recalled. But spokesman Bill Burton said Obama "stands by his recollections of these events as related in his book." And while they did enjoy marijuana, Mr. Ramos acknowledged, we played a lot more basketball than we smoked pot.. Those are qualities a president should have. Ann and the boy lived with the Dunhams in Honolulu until Obama was 6. As you know, he made getting better health care for Americans one of his missions.. Or f------ Eskimo." Although their paths have long since diverged, they've made it a point to gather for frequent reunions, in one of Obama's most visible links to the days when his life was much simpler and his problems more mundane. The same as in Washington, Orme said. 'We had great vibes between us.'. In his day, he was a better basketball player than a golfer. But after practice theyd hit the public courts. Madelyn Dunham, a rising executive at the Bank of Hawaii during Obama's Punahou days, was more reserved but seemed to love having her grandson's friends over to play and hang out. Allman also gaveTIME a snapshot of Obamas yearbook entry to her. 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. Murdaugh is heckled as he leaves court, Two Russian tanks annihilated with bombs by Ukrainian armed forces, Ukraine soldiers shoot down enemy drones with drones of their own, Dozens stuck in car park as staff refuses to open gate for woman, Missing hiker buried under snow forces arm out to wave to helicopter, Insane moment river of rocks falls onto Malibu Canyon in CA, Fleet-footed cop chases an offender riding a scooter, Isabel Oakeshott clashes with Nick Robinson over Hancock texts. "He didn't say what country he wanted to be president of. Having their back. The man is staggering and numb but eventually pulls out forgotten dignity from under his flaking coat,/And walks a straight line along the crooked world.. Bendix added that he was not shocked when Obama was elected president. Topolinski laughed when he recalled how they both tried out for the schools football team. He also thanked the "Choom Gang," a reference to "chooming," Hawaiian slang for smoking marijuana. He showed leadership and caring for his teammates, McLachlin said. I don't see that we are producing many Thomas Jeffersons nowadays. Yet those who knew him disputed that during recent interviews. Hopefully now that hes done well get to see each other more, he said. He posed in lifeguard stands. Because of his biracial heritage, he said, he was "like everyone in Hawaii, a mix of a lot of things." 'You really deserve better than clowns like us; you even laugh at my jokes! In the spring of 1979, Obama's mother and Maya, Barack's younger half sister by almost nine years, flew to Hawaii for his high school graduation. We didnt aim high enough., Every time I see him on television its surreal, said Topolinski. ---------- Kirsten Scharnberg reported from Honolulu and Kim Barker from Jakarta, Indonesia; Tribune staff reporter Ray Gibson contributed to this report. He describes making friends easily, becoming fluent in Indonesian in just six months and melding quite easily into the very foreign fabric of Jakarta. Their Jakarta neighborhood resembled a village more than the bustling metropolis the city is today. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. 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. ___ 10:40 a.m. But we didnt really become good friends until the seventh grade. "We live in a world of bullies and the U.S. has been bullied around. He was the only foreign child in the neighborhood. Some, like Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, counted later acquaintances among political donors as friends. The perfect tummy control bodysuit, a popcorn gadget, more bestsellers starting at $8. "It just wasn't a race thing," he reiterated again and again. He was always very focused.. But absent from those discussions, they say, was another student then known as Barry Obama. He knew that." We could all be hotheads at times, but he was very diplomatic, he said. This is my man! a delighted Obama said, Maurer recalled. So did Maurer, who is now a pastor in Houston. One day while visiting his mother, who was working at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Obama passed time by looking through several issues of Life magazine. 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. On this visit alone, Obama has spent more than 22 hours with the group on the lush golf courses that dot the island of Oahu. Obama confirmed in an interview earlier this month that the Ray character in "Dreams" actually is Kakugawa. His spelling wasnt too good either, he said, referring to the note Obama wrote in his high school year book. In the early 1970s, diplomats and Indonesian businessmen lived there in fancy gated houses with wide paved roads and sculpted bushes. 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. Obama, however, was not a part of that group, according to Anthony and Smith. In 2006, Mr. Obama used the family Christmas holiday there to decide whether to run for president. 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. In December 2006, as Mr. Obama decided on his first presidential campaign, the friends talked about how the race would complicate their next getaway. 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. They were like brothers, says Allman. While Obama's prom photographs have never been seen before, details have previously emerged about his high school years. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. The havoc time wreaks on fashion spares no one, not even the president of the United States. 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. She also shared a complimentary note that Obama had written in her high school yearbook. 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. So we'd get three kids together to fight him," recalled Yunaldi Askiar, 45, a former neighborhood friend. Kakugawa explained that he had meant they were playing in the world of the elite people who populated and ran Punahou--famous Hawaiian families like the Doles, owners of the pineapple fortune, or the original developers of Waikiki, the tourist mecca. Through the haze of the 70s, they recall only the rat baller who was always up for a game. A young black man struggles for acceptance at an institution of privilege, where he finds himself growing so angry and disillusioned at the world around him that he turns to alcohol and drugs. "It's their world, all right," Ray supposedly shouts at Obama. I guarantee he would have won a third term if he could have run again. Yet no such Life issue exists, according to historians at the magazine. 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. The U.S. military was expanding on the island of Oahu, home to the new capital of Honolulu. Obama spent the weekend in California after meeting Friday at a resort with Jordan's king. 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. Pothead. 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'. But the foursome rarely goes more than a few months without reconvening in one arrangement or another. 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. But twice that year the group gathered in Hawaii in August before the Democratic National Convention and in December after Mr. Obamas election. It can be very racially hostile, especially if youre white or black. Left: Kelli Allmans OAHUAN 1979 Yearbook. Others are more skeptical that the boy known as Barry felt the angst described by Barack. "I don't imagine the decision to let him stay behind was an easy one for anyone," Soetoro-Ng said. Not as well known is the fact that the many people who raised him were nearly as diverse as the places where he grew up. Instead we are producing Richard Nixons." On Sunday evening, Titcomb hosted a barbecue at his beachfront home for the entire contingent from . 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. In a May 21, 2008 Sports Illustrated interview, Obama spoke of the importance of basketball in his life. Greg Orme, a fellow varsity basketball player, was Obamas constant companion. With Obama just days away from turning over the reins to Donald Trump, Coach Mac and some of the guys young Barry played ball with at their Honolulu prep school reflected on his presidency and their playing years with pride. He would carry his books in one hand and his ball in the other," he said. Im incredibly proud of my friend. With a trimmed Afro, Hawaiian flower leis around his neck, Obama was surrounded by the disparate people who shaped him. But Orme is a hard man to find. Hawaii had become a state only two years before Obama's birth, and there were plenty of native Hawaiians still deeply unhappy about it. (D-Hawaii), a close friend of Obama . Instead, the chemicals had peeled off much of his skin, leaving him sad and scarred, Obama recalled. 'You are extremely sweet and foxy, I don't know why Greg would want to spend any time with me at all!' 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. HONOLULU (AP) The Latest on President Barack Obama's annual two-week vacation in Hawaii (all times local): 4 p.m. Ramadi fell to IS in May, marking a major setback for Iraq and the U.S. 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. I don't know why Greg would want to spend anytime with me at all! They have a different level of affection for you than friends you meet later in life. 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. The teacher, who still lives in Obama's old neighborhood, remembers that he always sat in the back corner of her classroom. Because hes a pastor, Maurer said he prefers not to weigh-in on politics. It remains a refuge for me when I travel there during the winter, my family and I, and see friends from high school.. Obama and his date Megan Hughes, a student at the Hawaii School for Girls at La Pietra, joined Orme at Allmans house, where the two couples sipped champagne before going to the dance and then an after-party. I get one, maybe.. 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. I cant tell if someone is Fijian or black.. "Stanley loved that little boy," said Abercrombie, now a Democratic congressman from Hawaii. Get-togethers in the decades after high school were rare as the men built careers and families, although Mr. Ramos, Mr. Titcomb and Mr. Orme attended the Obamas Chicago wedding in 1992. Im a Republican, but Ill endorse Barry for anything he wants, said Tom Topolinski, who backed his old buddy twice and voted this time for Trump. Made a strong case for them.. Obamas family is already insulating itself. Wed drive around in my van listening to Earth, Wind & Fire and looking for places to play, he said. They sought out parties, especially at the military bases on the island, where African-Americans would be in attendance. On prom night, the pair double-dated. "If this story is eight paragraphs, seven of them go to Greg. The White House says Obama is playing golf with some of his longtime friends including Mike Ramos, Greg Orme and Bobby Titcomb. A boy wants to find his place in a family where he is visibly different: chubby where others are thin, dark where others are light. Genevieve Cook, an elementary school teacher, and Obama met at a Christmas party in the East Village in 1983. She also sent advice about his future. The images from 1979 show a grinning 17-year-old Obama in a white suit with his arm around his date, Megan Hughes, before they headed to the party at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii. While Obama got saddled with the nickname Barry OBomber, Maurer said he also "got teased a lot for taking hard to make shots.". For much of their childhoods, Orme and Obama were more like brothers than buddies, constant companions both on and off the basketball court who even double-dated on senior prom night. But he took the high road and showed a lot of integrity. And they have cheered Obama on even when they disagreed with him. 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 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. After graduating in 1979, Maurer wound up at Stanford where he made the team as a walk on and found God. Among U.S. presidents, Obama is not alone in carving out time regularly to reconnect with his roots. You gotta give him that.. Obama admits in "Dreams" that during high school he frequently smoked marijuana, drank alcohol, even used cocaine occasionally. "I went to those parties up at Schofield but never saw him at any of them." In fact, the Life article and the photographs don't exist, say the magazine's own historians. One of his incredible legacies will be how he modeled being a family man. Likewise for Mr. Obama, it seems. Were the minorities here.. When kids teased him, Obama yelled back, "Curang, curang!" He can really relate to people. While Obama rocketed to political prominence, his friend headed down the troubled road Obama had feared he was following. The article included photos of a black man who had destroyed his skin with powerful chemical lighteners that promised to make him white. Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy. We played a lot of playground ball.. He said Obama may have come across as easy going, but he was no pushover. Most of his teachers and friends express sorrow that they did not know of Obamas racial anguish or inner demons. We have had presidents who have not modeled that super well., We had a long basketball career together, Orme recalled in a telephone interview from his home in Eugene, Oregon.
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