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Who are President Obama's golf buddies? - The Desert Sun Obama hangs with high school buds during Hawaii vacation And while they did enjoy marijuana, Mr. Ramos acknowledged, we played a lot more basketball than we smoked pot.. Hes exhibited class and dignity all the way through it. But its fun to imagine that in one of those pictures, theres a girl in a pastel dress or a lanky guy in a white sport coat who will end up becoming the leader of the free world.
Visits With School Pals Are a Touchstone on President's Trips to Hawaii During her son's earliest years, Obama's mother, whose full name was Stanley Ann Dunham because her father desperately had wished for a boy, attended college at the University of Hawaii. He struggled greatly with the foreign language, she said, and with his studies as a result. Instead, the chemicals had peeled off much of his skin, leaving him sad and scarred, Obama recalled. "He would be very helpful with friends. He was always very calm, very level-headed, very rational. Basketball was a refuge, a place where I made a lot of my closest friends, and picked up a lot of my sense of competition and fair play, he said. She also sent advice about his future. But absent from those discussions, they say, was another student then known as Barry Obama. I really admire that.. In 2011, he pleaded no contest to soliciting a prostitute, but Obama has stayed fiercely loyal to his childhood friend. 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. Some of these discrepancies are typical of childhood memories -- fuzzy in specifics, warped by age, shaped by writerly license. Our coaches were much more conservative, he said. He would have started on any other high school team on the state," McLachlin said of Obama. While Obama got saddled with the nickname Barry OBomber, Maurer said he also "got teased a lot for taking hard to make shots.". Obama, his mother and new baby sister, Maya, moved into a small apartment near the school's sprawling, lush campus. 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. You can see how he was much more sensitive than the other guys, even back then.. I dont know why people have slammed him like that, said Maurer. 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.
The Latest: Obamas, friends tour Hawaii Islamic arts center 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. The comments below have not been moderated, By
Darin Maurer and then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. Orme would stay for the games. Obama spent the weekend in California after meeting Friday at a resort with Jordan's king. I hope we can keep in touch this summer, even though Greg will be gone.'. (Courtesy Maya Soetoro-Ng ), The life stories, when the presidential candidate tells them, have a common theme: the quest to belong. 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.
Obama's Final Hawaiian Vacation as President - ABC News So far, this process has not yielded anything especially damaging to Obamas candidacy. And he clearly didn't appreciate that," Orme said. Sheriff: Cleveland man shot after attacking man with hatchet at Morgan County campground I don't know why Greg would want to spend anytime with me at all! 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. . 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. On prom night, the pair double-dated. I saw an old forgotten man/On an old, forgotten road, begins the 12-line poem. The photos appear in the new issue of TIME, which hits news stands Friday. 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. Left: Kelli Allmans OAHUAN 1979 Yearbook. The other kids would scrap with him sometimes, but because Obama was bigger and better-fed than many of them, he was hard to defeat. Right around then, we really started getting into basketball., Obama was all business when it came to "the game. He can really relate to people. He was always very focused.. 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. From left: Greg Orme, Kelli Allman, Barack Obama and Megan Hughes at Allmans parents house in Honolulu. "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. Likewise for Mr. Obama, it seems. 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.. The three men Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb and Greg. I brood, Mr. Obamas friend Mr. Ramos said a few years ago. He laughed and posed for photos with friends. But after practice theyd hit the public courts. It can be very racially hostile, especially if youre white or black. 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. Mr. Orme was unable to travel to Hawaii for the recent holiday, but the others called him twice. John F. Kennedy had his band of brothers from wartime. 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. Some, like Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, counted later acquaintances among political donors as friends. Those are qualities a president should have. The reality was less tidy. Then, one day about a year after he had arrived, Obama was gone.
Journalistic excavations of a presidential candidates past often turn ugly. 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. 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. The annual gatherings perhaps speak to Mr. Obamas greater need for their connection now that he has what is called the loneliest job in the world.
The Latest: Obama plays golf with longtime friends in Hawaii So we'd get three kids together to fight him," recalled Yunaldi Askiar, 45, a former neighborhood friend. If only I had saved that Nerf hoop we used to dunk on. 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. They divorced after seven years of marriage and have a daughter. Magazines, Or create a free account to access more articles, TIME Exclusive: President Obamas 1979 Prom Photos. Barry spent his days at the Punahou School in Hawaii studying, shooting hoops and goofing off with his friends. Allman said that she thought highly of Obama, who was 'very intelligent and witty'. I am not giving any interviews, Obamas grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, curtly interjected when a reporter phoned. Obamas prom pictures released. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. Now, I think hes a better golfer., Orme and Obama became pals not long after the future president arrived at Punahou as a fifth grader. "But it wasn't a race thing," he said. "I don't imagine the decision to let him stay behind was an easy one for anyone," Soetoro-Ng said. One of those kids was Orme, a smart, respectful teenager from a white, middle-class family. All three live mostly private lives when they're not being photographed with the commander in chief. "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. Once again, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, who had been as much parents as grandparents throughout the young man's life, said he could live with them. But any struggles he was experiencing were obscured by the fact that he had a racially diverse group of friends--many of whom often would crowd into his grandparents' apartment, near Punahou, after school let out. Bailey, who owes his nickname to his quickness on a court, said he's been "impressed by the way Obama handled himself as president." "Not even close," he said, adding that Obama was dealing with "some inner turmoil" in those days. 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. Asked Saturday about Kakugawa's recollections, the Obama campaign declined to make the senator available. Her date was Greg Orme, Obama's best friend. 18:47 GMT 23 May 2013. With a trimmed Afro, Hawaiian flower leis around his neck, Obama was surrounded by the disparate people who shaped him. The havoc time wreaks on fashion spares no one, not even the president of the United States. ", Ive known Barry since the fifth grade, he said. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. He then wrote down his number, encouraging Allman to give him a call, and signed off 'Barry Obama'. He knew the really small apartment that Mr. Obama lived in with his grandparents and what a talker Gramps was. 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. Ramos is most often referred to in stories about his relations with the president as a businessman. Adept at nailing long jump shots, Obama was called "Barry O'Bomber" by teammates. In Hawaii, our diversity defines us, it doesnt divide us, said Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a close friend of Obamas father in graduate school in the early 60s. kscharnberg@tribune.com kbarker@tribune.com, Column: For the Chicago Blackhawks remodel to work, their new house had better be built on a strong foundation, Merrillville food and beverage tax edging closer to reality, Remains found in Rockdale more than 25 years ago identified as Aurora woman, Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. 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. Standing up for your buddies. "He was very intelligent and witty. He came across an article that he later would describe as feeling like an "ambush attack." ___ 10:40 a.m. Allman said Obama didn't date a lot in high school but had plenty of charm. Obama never became terribly close with the children of the new school--this time a predominantly Muslim one--where he was enrolled. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. You are extremely sweet and foxy, he wrote. The 1979 photo was snapped inside the home of former classmate, Kelli Allman, who was the prom date of the president's close high schoolfriend, Greg Orme. I wish I would have known that those things were bothering him, or if they did bother him, said Eric Kusunoki, Obamas homeroom teacher from grades nine through 12. Bendix added that he was not shocked when Obama was elected president. WASHINGTON President Obama has called Hawaii his refuge, and so it has been throughout his political life. Even though Trump is a loose cannon at least he will stick up for what he believes.. In an essay about what he wanted to be when he grew up, Obama "wrote he wanted to be president," Sinaga recalled.
Obama's highs school pals in Hawaii: Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme 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 wearing a white dinner jacket as he poses with friends on the night of their senior prom in Hawaii. IE 11 is not supported. Third-grade teacher Fermina Katarina Sinaga, now 67, has perhaps the most telling story. The night, Obama later wrote, made him furious as he realized that whites held a "fundamental power" over blacks. There was his mother, Ann, a brilliant but impulsive woman; his grandmother Madelyn, a deeply private and stoically pragmatic Midwesterner; his grandfather Stanley, a loving soul inclined toward tall tales and unrealistic dreams. Not many presidents retained friendships from as far back as high school, although George W. Bush had close friends from his prep school days at Andover. 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. 21:01 GMT 31 Dec 2014. We are just such a mixed-up bag of races. 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.
The Latest: Obama finishes playing golf with 3 friends | AP News On page 271 of the 1979 Oahuan, Obama's entry reflects the crossroads he found himself at as he prepared for life beyond Hawaii. 'He and I really clicked,' she told TIME. You really deserve better than clowns like us; you even laugh at my jokes!.
He didnt have to see me, but he was a man of his word, he said. Then there's the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In a striking snapshot with his grandparents, Stanley smiles proudly while Madelyn hugs him fiercely, as though she doesn't want to let him go forth into a world far from the remote island that for so long had been his home. Now they mainly just golf more than 30 hours in six outings this vacation and trash-talk, just like in the old days. We have so many tones of brown here. 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.. 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. Greg Orme, a fellow varsity basketball player, was Obama's constant companion. Because of his biracial heritage, he said, he was "like everyone in Hawaii, a mix of a lot of things." 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. The president was returning to the White House on Monday. Last year, a book delved into his teenage years and claimed that Obama and his friends formed The Choom Gang - slang for smoking marijuana - in which he invented inhaling techniques and rode a car called the Choomwagon. For the past two weeks, he has been recharging on Oahu after an unpleasant year in the job. I get one, maybe..
Barack Obama, Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme - Bobby Titcomb Photos - Zimbio Obama's highs school pals in Hawaii: Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme But we never talked race." Having their back. The reality was less tidy. 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. Still, Bendix said, his old pal should have been a starter at Punahou and insisted he was not just being loyal to an old friend. In April 2011, Mr. Titcomb was arrested on a charge of soliciting prostitution in a Honolulu sting operation, but the reunions with the president never stopped. The number at Dunhams apartment in a nondescript Honolulu high rise has not changed in more than a quarter-century. He would bring up worldly topics far beyond his years. 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. Hawaii is a melting pot, a very intense place if youre a kid. 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. I think if people were one-on-one with him, theyd see things his way Look at how hes treated President-elect Trump. Kelli Allman is the pretty redhead pictured in the photo. "But it was only playing." "I never picked up on that," Hagar said. The idea that his biggest struggle was race is [bull]." "Punahou was an amazing school," Smith said. He took out (Osama) Bin Laden. "He was just one of those perfect [ethnic] mixes of everything you see in Hawaii." 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. Zulfan Adi was one of the neighborhood kids who teased Obama most mercilessly. On his senior yearbook page, he left behind these words: We go play hoop.. "One of us said that being the different guys in the room had awakened a little bit of empathy to what he must feel all the time at school. 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.
President Barack Obama Prom Photos | Time Barack Obama as a baby.
Secret Service stops man flying drone near president's motorcade "I brood," Mr. Obama's friend Mr. Ramos said a few years ago. But the reality felt far different for the handful of African-Americans attending classes there. The White House says Obama is playing golf with some of his longtime friends including Mike Ramos, Greg Orme and Bobby Titcomb. His wife and daughters are skiing in Colorado. He has ethnic Chinese mother and his father was Polish. A member of the varsity squad, though not a starter, Obama and his teammates brought Punahou the state championship in 1979, his senior year. It took about five hours for the president and his playing partners Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme, and Darrell . Memories of a racial awakening? Then his young mother, now divorced, met and married an Indonesian student studying at the University of Hawaii. But generally, said the presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, It does seem like these presidents need to find a sanctuary whether its a place or a group of people where they can just be themselves and feel the connection from the present to the past. High school friends who predate adulthood and professional attainments often know each others siblings, parents, even grandparents and know each other in a way that later friends often cannot. "He was a very provocative thinker. And on Tuesday, in what's become a yearly tradition, the men and their families gathered for a luau hosted by Titcomb. But asked what he believes Obamas biggest accomplishment was, he had a ready answer. Maurer, who mostly played guard, said he and Obama were no slouches but they were on teams with some really strong jocks. He also thanked the "Choom Gang," a reference to "chooming," Hawaiian slang for smoking marijuana. 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. "His friends called him `Negro,' " Darmawan said. 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. They compose notes to friends and family and include photos or quotes that best represent them. 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. We could all be hotheads at times, but he was very diplomatic, he said. But twice that year the group gathered in Hawaii in August before the Democratic National Convention and in December after Mr. Obamas election. It remains a refuge for me when I travel there during the winter, my family and I, and see friends from high school.. "I imagine other black children, then and now, undergoing similar moments of revelation," Obama wrote of the magazine photos in "Dreams." Right: Obama wrote the above note in Allmans yearbook at the end of his senior year in 1979. He played on the beach. But such solitude has become less and less attainable for presidents in modern times. They agreed to rendezvous in Hawaii every year for the holidays, and their reunions became regular even as Mr. Obama was busy climbing to senator and president, a path none of them imagined nearly four decades ago and 5,000 miles from Washington. "It just wasn't a race thing," he reiterated again and again. As the president's motorcade left the golf course at 3:58 p.m . 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, however, was not a part of that group, according to Anthony and Smith.
Pic of the day: Barack Obama at prom | Salon.com Those of us who were black did feel isolated--there's no question about that." Obamas presidential prospects have been fueled in large part by an arresting life story: The son of a Kenyan goatherder, he wrestled with his dual identities to become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review and a member of the U.S. Senate. McLachlin said he survived a severe stroke shortly before Obama was elected president in 2008. Known as Ann throughout her adult life, she kept to herself. 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. And when tempers flared, Barry was the peacemaker. Only Mr. Titcomb stayed in Hawaii. Basketball was the great equalizer, he said. This is the Barry I remember.. 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.. 'You are extremely sweet and foxy, I don't know why Greg would want to spend any time with me at all!'
Obama's 1979 prom photo, yearbook note to 'foxy' friend unearthed Ann and the boy lived with the Dunhams in Honolulu until Obama was 6. They only did it to Barry." And the accounts bear out much of Obama's self-portrait as someone deeply affected by his father's abandonment yet able to thrive in greatly disparate worlds. Allman also gaveTIME a snapshot of Obamas yearbook entry to her. Rik Smith, a black Punahou student two years older than Obama, remembers a Halloween when white students would dress as slaves, coming to school in tattered clothes with their faces painted black with shoe polish. Obama and his family have been in his native Hawaii since December 20 for the Christmas holiday. All Rights Reserved.
Barack Obama, Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme - Zimbio "He never verbalized any of that," Orme said during a telephone interview from his home in Oregon. As he had at the old school, Obama sat in a back corner. Coaches have recalled how he never went anywhere without a ball. 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. Still, all of his teachers at the Catholic school recognized leadership qualities in him. "He lived across the street from school and before classes hed shoot baskets on the outside courts, then at lunch hed shoot more baskets, then Id have him for three hours, then hed go home, eat supper, and then be outside again shooting baskets.. He knew that." Their photos are more likely to be stored on Facebook than in a shoe box.
Obama spending long holiday weekend in Southern California 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. After a recent lunch with a reporter, he winked at a table of faculty-lounge colleagues and joked, This one is with Playgirl.. At the same time, several of his oft-recited stories may not have happened in the way he has recounted them. 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.' 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. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Corky Siemaszko is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital. "Suddenly we asked, `Where's Barry?' After high school graduation Obama went to Columbia University and then Harvard Law School, where he met his future wife, Michelle.
Obama's High School Basketball Coaches, Teammates Remember 'Barry' 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. 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. When it rained, Obama and his pals went bowling, instead. And like Obama, he found his place on the basketball court. "I never knew, until reading the book later, how much that night had upset him." The photos and interviews are in the new issue of TIME, which is out on Friday. The President of the United States is no different. Obama and his Punahou School classmates Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb and Greg Orme enjoyed a sunny and breezy day on the links. I think hes done great with all the stuff he inherited, like the recession and the two wars. Elite Dutch colonists once lived there; the Japanese moved in during their occupation of Indonesia in World War II.