It was pretty typical from there out as far as what happens at prom: the dinner and the dancing and the photos.. But Furushima, too, is learning to be on guard around the press. Some of these discrepancies are typical of childhood memories -- fuzzy in specifics, warped by age, shaped by writerly license. Sheriff: Cleveland man shot after attacking man with hatchet at Morgan County campground Here is how some of Obamas former teammates and coaches remember those years: To understand President Obama, you have to understand his Hawaiian roots, Maurer said. Basketball was the great equalizer, he said. After a recent lunch with a reporter, he winked at a table of faculty-lounge colleagues and joked, This one is with Playgirl.. 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. "He liked drawing Spider-Man and Batman," said another friend, Widiyanto Hendro Cahyono, 46. Bush remained pals with men he served with in World War II. 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. Their new neighborhood was only 3 miles to the west, but a world away. John F. Kennedy had his band of brothers from wartime. It was very important to me all the way through my teenage years.. For me its the unconditional love, its the nontransactional nature of the relationship that enduring quality that is something that I really value, he said. They were. One of those friends, Neil Abercrombie, then a graduate student in the sociology department, frequently would see young Obama around town with his grandfather Stanley, whom Obama called "Gramps." Hes off the grid, said Hale, who is now the schools head basketball coach. The three men - Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb and Greg. He was always very calm, very level-headed, very rational. Obama, his mother and new baby sister, Maya, moved into a small apartment near the school's sprawling, lush campus. In December 2006, as Mr. Obama decided on his first presidential campaign, the friends talked about how the race would complicate their next getaway. "They own it and we in it. He had friends there, he was comfortable there, and to a kid his age, that's all that mattered." "Barry's biggest struggles then were missing his parents. "I never knew, until reading the book later, how much that night had upset him." Wearing a white shirt and dark-colored shorts and a baseball hat, President Barack Obama finished 18 holes of golf at the Kapolei Golf Course in Kapolei, Hawaii. Allman also gaveTIME a snapshot of Obamas yearbook entry to her. (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. Hes been so gracious to him.. He describes making friends easily, becoming fluent in Indonesian in just six months and melding quite easily into the very foreign fabric of Jakarta. 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. McLachlin said he survived a severe stroke shortly before Obama was elected president in 2008. "In the absence of his father, there was not a kinder, more understanding man than Stanley Dunham. Mr. Orme was unable to travel to Hawaii for the recent holiday, but the others called him twice. As it made its way over the mountain pass, he took in views of the lush, green and misty Koolau mountains. But I was pretty wrapped up in my own world back then.. 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. The teacher, who still lives in Obama's old neighborhood, remembers that he always sat in the back corner of her classroom. "I brood," Mr. Obama's friend Mr. Ramos said a few years ago. 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. Titcomb has worked as a commercial fisherman and an airline employee, according to the school's alumni magazine. I dont know why people have slammed him like that, said Maurer. The comments below have not been moderated, By 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. He is unyielding in the things he believes in., I think hes done an unbelievable job as president, he said. He can really relate to people. IE 11 is not supported. The White House says Obama is playing golf with some of his longtime friends including Mike Ramos, Greg Orme and Bobby Titcomb. WASHINGTON President Obama has called Hawaii his refuge, and so it has been throughout his political life. 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. 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. Obama, the son of a black father and white mother, stood out. Made a strong case for them.. He learned to adapt to unfamiliar territory. 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. And like Obama, he found his place on the basketball court. You can see how he was much more sensitive than the other guys, even back then.. But Kakugawa, a convicted drug felon, said Saturday that he had never been the "prototypical angry black guy" that Obama portrays. 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. 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. 'You are extremely sweet and foxy, I don't know why Greg would want to spend any time with me at all!' Among his supporters, his likability and credibility have only been boosted by his stories of being an outsider trying to fight his way in. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man," Obama wrote in "Dreams." ', '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.'. "I never picked up on that," Hagar said. Hawaii is a remarkable place, he said. With a trimmed Afro, Hawaiian flower leis around his neck, Obama was surrounded by the disparate people who shaped him. IE 11 is not supported. "It was a really fun, happy time. A close friend of Obama's from their teenage years, Greg Orme, spent so much time with Dunham that he, too, called him "Gramps." "I did say we were playing in their world," he explained, "but that had nothing to do with race. On Sunday evening, Titcomb hosted a barbecue at his beachfront home for the entire contingent from . Greg Orme, a fellow varsity basketball player, was Obamas constant companion. 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. Associated Press Their Jakarta neighborhood resembled a village more than the bustling metropolis the city is today. "The brothers," as Lewis Anthony Jr., an African-American in the class of 1977 put it, hung out together, often talking about issues involving race and civil rights. 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. Obama and his family have been in his native Hawaii since December 20 for the Christmas holiday. 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. 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. Others almost certainly illustrate how carefully the young man guarded the secret of his loneliness from even those who knew him best. Obama wasn't shy about advocating for himself and his fellow backup players, Lum said. 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. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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 reality was less tidy. Corky Siemaszko is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital. He was a younger black man looking for guidance." They only did it to Barry." He was always very focused.. remembered Ati Kisjanto, 45. I get one, maybe.. He even scored a basket," he said. Maurer, who played ball with Obama from the seventh grade through their senior year, said Julius Erving, better known as Dr. J, was their basketball hero. 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. In its reissue after he gave the keynote address at the Democratic convention in 2004, "Dreams from My Father" joined a long tradition of political memoirs that candidates have used to introduce themselves to the American people. Thats what we did to fit in, he said. 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. 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'. We didnt aim high enough., Every time I see him on television its surreal, said Topolinski. Wed drive around in my van listening to Earth, Wind & Fire and looking for places to play, he said. 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. 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. Memories of a racial awakening? If you look at our teams, that year I was the only white guy on the starting five. Bailey, who owes his nickname to his quickness on a court, said he's been "impressed by the way Obama handled himself as president." Then and now, Punahou and Hawaii liked to see themselves as more diverse and colorblind than the rest of the nation. One of the neatest things is that he has promoted family, he said. He'd pick them up if they fell down,'' Darmawan recalled. ", Every day after practice hed stay to play pickup games against the coaching staff," he said. 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. Through the haze of the 70s, they recall only the rat baller who was always up for a game. Among U.S. presidents, Obama is not alone in carving out time regularly to reconnect with his roots. 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. Bailey, who coached Obama during his junior year and now runs an ambulance service, said young Barry was a "gym rat. "But looking back now I can see he was seeking more from those guys than that. They divorced after seven years of marriage and have a daughter. Chris McLachlin is seen at his house on Jan. 4 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Obama Hits Russia, the Gym and the Beach Thursday, Dec. 29 "He would protect the smaller ones." Old friend disputes memoir Every senior graduating from Punahou gets to design a quarter-page in the yearbook. The motorcade arrived in Kapolei around 11:30 a.m. ___ "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 struggled greatly with the foreign language, she said, and with his studies as a result. Even though Trump is a loose cannon at least he will stick up for what he believes.. 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. 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. 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. Those of us who were black did feel isolated--there's no question about that." The havoc time wreaks on fashion spares no one, not even the president of the United States. They were joined by two other teenagers - his best friend Greg Orme and date Kelli McCormack. 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. If young Obama had struggled to find a place at Punahou, it was well hidden on this day as well. Barack Obama, #23, during his senior year at Punahou School, Honolulu. 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. So far, this process has not yielded anything especially damaging to Obamas candidacy. McCormack - now Kelli Allman - told TIME that the group sipped champagne before enjoying an evening of photos, dinner and dancing. Obama is. A member of the varsity squad, though not a starter, Obama and his teammates brought Punahou the state championship in 1979, his senior year. KAILUA, HI - DECEMBER 29: (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. And he frequently made peace--even allies--with the very people who angered him most. His spelling wasnt too good either, he said, referring to the note Obama wrote in his high school year book. 'It was a really fun, happy time,' she said. But he took the high road and showed a lot of integrity. But twice that year the group gathered in Hawaii in August before the Democratic National Convention and in December after Mr. Obamas election. I remember when we were seniors in high school, somebody said Barry would be on the Supreme Court, he said. There are, however, chapters in Obamas high school narrative that are not subject to dispute. He also was one of the only neighborhood children whose parents enrolled him in a new Catholic school in an area populated almost entirely by Betawis, the old tribal landowning Jakarta natives who were very traditional Muslims. "Barry liked to draw heroes." Then there's the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. And when Obama came back for Christmas, he got invited to join the new president at a pickup basketball game. This is the Barry I remember.. We have this tradition to head home to Hawaii for Christmas. Half the homes were old bamboo huts; half, including the Soetoro house, were nicer, with brick or concrete and red-tiled roofs. 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. 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 played on the beach. He took out (Osama) Bin Laden. "All of them were imperfect but all of them loved him fiercely, and I believe he took the best qualities from each of them." Thats when we see each other. 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. She mixed encouragement to keep up his grades with laments about American politics. In the 2004 presidential campaign, both John F. Kerry and President Bush were embroiled in disputes over their Vietnam-era records, controversies that were stoked by the conflicting recollections of people who knew them. Obama also made golf outings,. But the reality felt far different for the handful of African-Americans attending classes there. I think if people were one-on-one with him, theyd see things his way Look at how hes treated President-elect Trump. Darin Maurer and then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. He showed leadership and caring for his teammates, McLachlin said. 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. Most classmates and teachers recall an easygoing, slightly chunky young man, with the same infectious smile he sports today.
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