Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  4. “First African Enrolled in Hawaii Studied Two Years by Mail,” Ka Leo O Hawaii [KLOH], 8 October 1959, p. 3, KLOH, 5 November 1959, p. 1; “Isle Inter-Racial Attitude Impresses Kenya Student,” HSB, 28 November 1959, p. 5; Betty Mooney to Frank Laubach, 22 October 1959, Laubach Papers Box 8; Obama (1810 University Avenue) to Gordon Hagberg, 8 December 1959, PSFP Box 214; “Application by Alien Student for Permission to Accept Employment,” 8 December 1959, Obama INS File; Harry Heintzen to Obama, 4 February 1960, Obama (1648A Tenth Avenue) to Heintzen, 10 February 1960, Sumie F. McCabe to AAI, “Barack H. Obama,” 12 February 1960, Harold M. Bitner to AAI, 15 February 1960, Elizabeth Mooney to Heintzen, 26 February 1960, PSFP Box 214. Marjorie Yoshioka, “Model UNers to Debate Race,” KLOH, 7 April 1960, p. 4; “VJ” (AAI) to File, “Barack Obama,” 19 April 1960, PSFP Box 214; Barack H. Obama (1648-A Tenth Avenue), “Terror in the Congo,” HSB, 8 June 1960, p. 8; Obama UH Transcript, 22 June 1960 (625 Eleventh Avenue), Heintzen to Obama, 11 July 1960, Obama (2036 Round Top Terrace) to Heintzen, 24 July 1960, PSFP Box 214; Sumie McCabe, “Certificate of Eligibility,” 24 July 1960, and Obama (2036 Round Top Terrace), “Application to Extend Time of Temporary Stay,” 28 July 1960, Obama INS File; Robert L. Sherman (AAI) to UH, 7 September 1960, Edward T. White to Sherman, 22 September 1960, Elizabeth Mooney Kirk to Heintzen, 24 March 1961, PSFP Box 214; Obama, “Application to Extend Time of Temporary Stay,” 31 August 1961, Obama INS File; Dorothy Heckman Gregor quoted in Jacobs, The Other Barack, p. 111; Judy Ware in Janny Scott, A Singular Woman (Riverhead Books, 2011), p. 84; Philip Ochieng, “The Pride of a People: Barack Obama, the Luo,” Nation, 17 January 2009. See also Philip Ochieng, “It’s About America’s Humanity, Not Black Power,” East African, 7 November 2008. On Dunham’s virginal status prior to fall 1960, see Scott, A Singular Woman, p. 84.

  The 1960–61 and 1961–62 Polk City Directories for Honolulu both list Barack H. Obama as living at 625 Eleventh Avenue.

  At least two previous authors, including Jacobs, The Other Barack, p. 115, and a subsequent one who subcontracted out much of his research and interviewing, including to a published expert on UFOs, name Ella Wiswell as the instructor for Russian 101. In their absence of more extensive footnoting, however, KLOH, 19 January 1961, p. 5, giving a 28 January 1961 final exam date for Russian 101, and “Schedule of Courses,” KLOH, 26 January 1961, p. 8, offer a potentially decisive corrective. Four fall 1960 Russian courses were taught—101, 151, 153, 201—with 102 (which required three additional language laboratory sessions per week) and again three more advanced ones offered for spring 1961. Wiswell is identified as teaching only the advanced courses, while two sections of the introductory course were taught by Isabella Troupiansky, a 1930 graduate of the University of Paris who, born in 1907, was fifty-three years old in 1960. Troupiansky taught at UH at least from 1960 through 1961. See Modern Language Journal 46 (March 1962): 124, and Patricia A. Polansky, “Who Created Us? . . . ,” Slavic & East European Language Resources 9 (2008): 174–225. Troupiansky died in 2002 at age ninety-five. Ann Dunham’s subsequent University of Washington transcript confirms that she took a fall 1960 UH Russian course, but lists it as Russian 100, presumably a typo.

  5. The starting point for any examination of Ann Dunham’s early life and those of her parents is Janny Scott’s rich and valuable A Singular Woman, esp. pp. 20–23, 25–26, 37–38, 41–42. Also informing this account are Stephen MacDonogh, Pioneers: The Frontier Family of Barack Obama (Brandon, 2010); two excellent Associated Press stories by a pair of superb reporters, Allen G. Breed, “‘Toot’: Obama Grandmother a Force That Shaped Him,” 23 August 2008, and Nancy Benac, “Obama’s Gramps: Gazing Skyward on D-Day in England,” 30 May 2009; and DJG’s interviews with Ralph Dunham and Charles Payne. See also David Nitkin and Harry Merritt, “A New Twist to an Intriguing Family History,” Baltimore Sun, 2 March 2007.

  6. Scott, A Singular Woman, esp. pp. 56, 58; DJG interviews with Ralph Dunham and Charles Payne; Hugh Pickens, “Barack Obama’s Grandfather Stanley Dunham,” peacecorpsonline.typepad.com/poncacityweloveyou, 6 February 2009; Beverly Bryant, “Obama’s Family Once Lived in PC,” Ponca City News, 8 February 2009, p. A1; Ann Arnold, “Vernon’s Obama Connection,” TexomasHomePage.com, 14 February 2009; Fred Mann, “Kansas Roots Show in Obama, Say Relatives,” Wichita Eagle, 2 February 2008; Rick Montgomery, “Barack Obama’s Mother Wasn’t Just a Girl from Kansas,” Kansas City Star, 26 May 2008, p. A1; Susan Peters, “President Obama: From Kansas to the Capital,” KAKE.com (Wichita), 27 January 2009. Ann’s other childhood books, all in Box 7 of the Obama Family Papers at UH and all in editions dating from between 1946 and 1950, are almost all well-known classics, including Aesop’s Fables, Pinocchio, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.

  7. Scott, A Singular Woman, pp. 43–72, esp. p. 47; Tim Jones, “Obama’s Mom: Not Just a Girl from Kansas,” CT, 27 March 2007; Nicole Brodeur, “Memories of Obama’s Mother,” Seattle Times, 5 February 2008; Jonathan Martin, “Obama’s Mother Remembered as ‘Uncommon,’” Seattle Times, 8 April 2008, p. A1; Amanda Ripley, “The Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” Time, 21 April 2008, pp. 36ff; Susan Essoyan, “Strong Women Led Obama,” HSB, 10 August 2008; most especially Phil Dougherty, “Stanley Ann Dunham, Mother of Barack Obama, Graduates from Mercer Island High School in 1960,” HistoryLink.org, 22 January 2009, which corrects errors in earlier stories; Lisa Fairbanks-Rossi, “Like Mother, Like Son: Before Barack Became a Kid in Hawaii,” Pacific Northwest Inlander, 27 January 2009; and DJG interviews with Ralph Dunham, Charles Payne, and Susan Botkin Blake. Obama, DFMF, p. 123, indicates Ann first saw Black Orpheus in Chicago while working there as an au pair during the summer of 1959, but no other evidence or recollection, including most significantly Scott’s A Singular Woman, testifies to Ann spending a summer in Chicago.

  David Maraniss, Barack Obama: The Story (Simon & Schuster, 2012), pp. 135–37, 154 [hereinafter BOTS] describes Isle-Wide. Given the group project nature of its research and interviewing, specifics presented in BOTS must be treated with considerable caution. See, for example, in a publication that always must be read with the greatest possible caution, Don Wilkie, “What David Maraniss Left Out of the Story,” American Thinker, 11 July 2012. However, Ralph Dunham’s excellent memory independently confirms the Isle-Wide story.

  Most loony musings about the Obamas and the Dunhams merit no citation or comment. One regrettable exception, given both the author’s vita and the essay’s venue, is Angelo M. Codevilla, “The Chosen One,” Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2011, pp. 52–58, esp. p. 54. Obama Sr. was not selected by the CIA to study in the U.S., nor was Stanley Dunham a CIA operative. First arriving in Hawaii in the summer of 1960, neither was Dunham on hand to greet Obama Sr. upon his arrival in 1959. The fascinating photo in question, of uncertain date and provenance, may well picture Stanley Dunham with Obama Sr., but if so it almost certainly dates from June 1962, when Obama was leaving Hawaii.

  8. Stanley Ann Dunham Obama’s University of Washington Transcript; Barack Obama to Genevieve Cook, 1 January [1985], Genevieve Cook Papers; Stanley Ann D. Obama v. Barack H. Obama, Libel for Divorce, #57972, Domestic Relations Division, First Judicial Circuit Court, Hawaii, 25 January 1964; DJG interviews with Zeituni Onyango, Ralph Dunham, and Charles Payne; Auma Obama, And Then Life Happens (St. Martin’s Press, 2012), p. 35 (recalling later being told that “Her father is insisting that the two of them get married”); Kadi Warner in Scott, A Singular Woman, p. 91; Suzanne Roig, “Hawaii Friends, Former Co-Workers Remember Madelyn Dunham,” HA, 15 November 2008; Herbert A. Sample, “Barack Obama’s Late Grandmother Remembered,” AP, 15 November 2008.

  Ann’s son would later write that “how and when the marriage occurred remains a bit murky” (Obama, DFMF, p. 22) and would tell a subsequent interviewer, “I never probed my mother about the details. Did they decide to get married because she was already pregnant?” (Ripley, “The Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” Time, 21 April 20
08, pp. 36ff.). On occasion, the younger Obama has offered comments regarding his parents’ marriage that are patently inaccurate. See Obama, Remarks at Selma Voting Rights March Commemoration, 4 March 2007; and Patrick Healey and Jeff Zeleny, “Clinton and Obama Unite, Briefly, in Pleas to Blacks,” NYT, 5 March 2007, p. A14: “Obama relayed a story of how his Kenyan father and his Kansas mother fell in love because of the tumult of Selma, but he was born in 1961, four years before the confrontation at Selma took place.” In one of the few interviews Madelyn Dunham ever gave prior to her death in 2008, she said in October 2004 that her daughter “was sometimes startling.” Asked how, she replied, “she married Barry’s father.” David Mendell, Obama: From Promise to Power (HarperCollins, 2007), p. 27. See also Mendell, “The Teachings of Toot,” CM, 21 October 2008. That comment rightly stresses that Ann did not marry against her own will, above and beyond her father’s insistence.

  9. “Phi Kap, Phi Beta Kappa Present Awards Tonight,” KLOH, 12 January 1961, p. 1; Robert L. Sherman to UH, 27 January 1961, Obama (1704 Punahou Street, Apt. 15) to Hagberg, 8 February 1961, Obama to Hagberg, 25 February 1961, Obama, “Application for Domestic Scholarship,” 1 March 1961, Obama to AAI, 4 March 1961, Allan F. Saunders to AAI, 8 March 1961, PSFP Box 214; “248 Students Make Dean’s List, KLOH, 9 March 1961, p. 4; Hagberg to Obama, 10 March 1961, James K. Lowers to Hagberg, 14 March 1961, Lee E. Winters to Hagberg, 2 April 1961, Sherman to Obama, 7 June 1961, and Obama to Sherman, 18 June 1961, PSFP Box 214; Lucy Ikeda, “Petition Urges Repeal of Georgia Act,” KLOH, 19 January 1961, p. 1; E. W. Putman (president, NAACP Honolulu Branch), “Georgia Petition,” KLOH, 16 February 1961, p. 4; “Integration Pickets Greet Alabama Governor,” HSB, 25 June 1961, p. 1; “Bias Foes Greet ’Bama Governor,” HA, 25 June 1961, p. A8; Leo Egan, “Governors Asked to Back Kennedy,” NYT, 27 June 1961, p. 13; Neil Abercrombie, “Racial Equality Now!” KLOH, 30 June 1961, p. 2; Hal Abercrombie in Jacobs, The Other Barack, p. 109, confirming Obama’s presence.

  One of the other leading Patterson pickets, John M. Kelly Jr., became locally famous in a very different context after founding Save Our Surf that very same year. See Catherine E. Toth, “Hawaii Surf Activist John Kelly Dies,” HA, 5 October 2007; Diana Leon, “His Save Our Surf Gave Waves a Break,” HSB, 5 October 2007; “John Kelly: Tireless Savior of the Surf,” HSB, 7 October 2007; Suzanne Roig, “Hawaii Surf Legend John Kelly Laid to Rest,” HA, 19 November 2007; and Brett Thomas and Chris Evans, “The Aloha of John Kelly,” Surfer’s Journal 16 (Summer–Fall 2007): 6, 8.

  10. Obama, “Application by Alien Student for Permission to Accept Employment,” 3 March 1961, Ralph H. Holton (INS District Director) to Obama, 9 March 1961, and Lyle H. Dahlin, “Memo for File,” n.d. [10–11 April 1961], all Obama INS File; Sally Jacobs, “Father Spoke of Having Obama Adopted,” BG, 7 July 2011, p. A1; Zeituni Onyango e-mail to DJG, 7 July 2011; DJG interviews with Charles Payne, Ralph Dunham, and Virginia Dunham Goeldner; Jacobs, The Other Barack, pp. 122–24; Scott, A Singular Woman, p. 25; “Certificate of Live Birth,” 8 August 1961, Hawaii State Department of Health # 61-10641 (issued 25 April 2011); “Births, Marriages, Deaths,” HA, 13 August 1961, p. B6; “Births,” HSB, 14 August 1961, p. 24. Obama’s 1704 Punahou Street #15 address also appears in “East African Students in the United States as of December, 1961,” p. 8, AASF Papers Box B Fld. Lists—Airlift Students, and Scheinman Papers Box 20 Fld. 2. On Dr. Sinclair, see his 24 August 2003 HSB obituary notice; Dan Nakaso, “Born in the USA, Certificate Proves,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 28 April 2011; and Corky Siemaszko’s 29 April 2011 New York Daily News interview with his widow. One self-proclaimed secondhand witness to the 4 August birth can be entirely discounted. See Paula Voell, “Teacher from Kenmore Recalls Obama Was a Focused Student,” Buffalo News, 20 January 2009 (former Punahou teacher Barbara Nelson describing well-known Honolulu obstetrician Dr. Rodney T. West as the attending physician rather than Dr. Sinclair); see also Maraniss, BOTS, pp. 166, 276. Dr. West died in 2008. See Dan Nakaso, “Pearl Harbor Survivor a Hero to Visitors,” HA, 11 November 2007, and “Rodney T. West,” Physician Executive, May 2008.

  11. Obama, “Application to Extend Time of Temporary Stay,” 31 August 1961, Obama, “Statement to Be Signed by Applicant for Nonimmigrant Student Visa,” n.d. [31 August 1961], William T. Wood II, “Memo: Obama, Barack H.,” 31 August 1961, Ralph H. Holton to Obama, 6 September 1961, all Obama INS File; News from East-West Center #6, July 1961, p. 5, Obama to AAI, 19 September 1961, and Robert L. Sherman to Obama, 19 September 1961, PSFP Box 214; “Zeigler Gets Adviser Post,” KLOH, 29 September 1961, p. 1; Obama to AAI, 3 October 1961, Obama, “Application for Domestic Scholarship,” 27 October 1961, A. Lee Ziegler to Sherman, 9 November 1961, Allan F. Saunders to AAI, 15 November 1961 (stating that Obama “has free relations with a variety of students”), Sherman to Saunders, 28 November 1961, and Saunders to Sherman, 6 December 1961, PSFP Box 214; Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Transcript, University of Washington; University of Washington Catalogue, 1961–62, p. 5; Jonathan Martin, “Obama’s Mother Remembered as ‘Uncommon,’” Seattle Times, 8 April 2008, p. A1; Michael Patrick Leahy, What Does Barack Obama Believe? (Harpeth River Press, [1 September] 2008), esp. pp. 5–6, 31–32 (based upon 23 August 2008 phone interviews with Susan Botkin Blake, Maxine Hanson Box, and Barbara Cannon Rusk); Charlette LeFevre, “Barack Obama: From Capitol Hill to Capitol Hill,” Capitol Hill Times, 9 January 2009; Patti Payne, “Obama’s Mother Went to Mercer Island High School,” Puget Sound Business Journal, 11 January 2009; Jenny Neyman, “Obama Baby-Sitter Awaits New Era,” Redoubt Reporter [Soldotna, AK], 20 January 2009; Charlette LeFevre and Philip Lipson, “Baby Sitting Barack Obama on Seattle’s Capitol Hill,” Seattle Museum of the Mysteries, 28 January 2009 (reprinted in Seattle Gay News, 6 February 2009); Phil Dougherty, “Barack Obama Moves to Seattle in August or Early September 1961,” HistoryLink.org, 10 February 2009; Scott, A Singular Woman, pp. 87–88; Jacobs, The Other Barack, p. 127; DJG interview with Susan Botkin Blake; and, with the greatest reluctance (and only because it recounts a phone interview with Mary Toutonghi), Jerome Corsi, “New Doubts Revealed in Obama Nativity Story,” WorldNetDaily, 28 July 2009. A one-minute video interview with Susan Botkin Blake entitled “She Changed His Diapers” was posted on www.chicagotribune.com on 27 March 2007 but has since vanished from the Web. Maraniss, BOTS, p. 176, states regarding Ann that “her mother encouraged her escape, and apparently abetted it. She called a friend on Mercer Island to arrange temporary shelter.” This is a very plausible guess, but no source whatsoever is cited to support the claim that Madelyn actively aided Ann’s move to Seattle.

  12. Jacobs, The Other Barack, p. 126; Robert M. Ruenitz, “I Called Him ‘Obama,’” in Naranhkiri Tith et al., “Remembering My Friend Barack Obama,” Cambodiana.org, January 2006 (now defunct yet preserved in an otherwise often unreliable Website, www.theobamafile.com/_family/senior.htm); “Hitosubashi, UH Combine for Economic Seminar,” KLOH, 17 October 1961, p. 1; “Nuclear Stalemate Views to Be Aired at Symposium” and “Enrollment at New High,” both KLOH, 20 October 1961, p. 1; “Foreign Scholars Discuss Nuclear Arms Stalemate,” KLOH, 28 November 1961, p. 3; Kiri Tith e-mails to DJG; Neil Abercrombie, “He Protests,” KLOH, 22 December 1961, p. 4; “NAACP Group to Hear Obama,” KLOH, 12 January 1962, p. 3; Obama to Robert L. Sherman, 31 January 1962, PSFP Box 214; Ruth H. Bunche to Dear Friend, 8 February 1962, AASF Papers Box B Fld. Financial Items Bills; Sherman to Obama, 9 February 1962, and A. Lee Ziegler to AAI, 21 February 1962, PSFP Box 214; “Liberal Arts Society Elects 26 Students to Membership,” KLOH, 27 April 1962, p. 3; “A Call to All the People of Hawaii,” KLOH, 8 May 1962, p. 3; “‘Peace Rally’ Set for 3PM Today,” HSB, 13 May 1962, p. 12; George Eagle, “Peace Rally Hears World Amity Pleas,” HA, 14 May 1962, pp. A1, A2; “Marchers Make Plea for Peace,” HSB, 14 May 1962, p. 20; “Community Leaders Call for Action to Prevent War,” Voice of the ILWU, 18 May 1962, p. 5; “Barack Obama Senior in 1962,” ILWULocal142.org, 12 March 2009.

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sp; 13. Betty Mooney Kirk to Harry Heintzen, 22 March 1962, PSFP Box 214; Kirk to Tom Mboya, 8 May 1962, Mboya to Kirk, 14 May 1962, Mboya Papers Box 47 Fld. 5; Helen Roberts letters of 15 May and 4 July 1962 as quoted in Jacobs, The Other Barack, p. 130; Auma Obama, And Then Life Happens, p. 32; Zeituni Onyango, Tears of Abuse, pp. 26–27; Barack Obama to “Dear Tom,” 29 May 1962, Mboya Papers Box 41 Fld. 5. Zeituni wrote that Kezia “left Kogelo for her parent’s home in Kendu Bay leaving the children behind” when “Auma was just a baby” after hearing that Barack “had a girlfriend” in the U.S. “Kezia returned to check on them but never stayed.” Tears, pp. 26–27.

  14. Jacobs, The Other Barack, p. 128; Abon’go Malik Obama and Frank Koyoo, Barack Obama Sr., p. 183; “1,201 U. of H. Students Get Diplomas, Degrees,” HSB, 18 June 1962, p. 3; “1200 Students Get Degrees at UH Commencement,” HA, 18 June 1962, p. A5; “Kenya Student Wins Fellowship,” HSB, 20 June 1962, p. 7; John Griffin, “First UH African Graduate Gives View on East-West Center,” HA, 22 June 1962, p. B3 (reporting that Obama “leaves today”); Neil Abercrombie in Tim Jones, “Obama’s Mom,” CT, 27 March 2007; Jacobs, The Other Barack, p. 131; Barbara Cannon Rusk’s 23 August 2008 interview as quoted in Leahy, What Does Barack Obama Believe? p. 36; Rusk in Phil Dougherty, “Barack Obama Moves to Seattle in August or Early September 1961,” HistoryLink.org, 10 February 2009; Scott, A Singular Woman, p. 84; Janny Scott e-mail to DJG, 22 September 2011; Dinesh Sharma, Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia (Praeger, 2011), p. 220; Auma Obama, And Then Life Happens, p. 37.