[Fred Nerks]

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2008/Sep/12/ln/hawaii809120379.html

EXCERPT:

SEPARATION AND DIVORCE

In the early 1970s, as her research and success in helping villages increased, Soetoro and Dunham split up — and eventually divorced in 1979.

“He got a job with Union Oil,” Dewey said. “Lolo joked that they got divorced because she was falling in love with Javanese handcrafts and he was becoming an American oil man, which wasn’t far from the truth.”

Maya and her mother returned to Honolulu in 1973 and, for three years, lived with Barack on Poki Street, just ‘ewa of Punahou School.

“My father did not live with us at that time,” Maya said. “They lived apart. They were still together and still wanted to make a go of the marriage.”

Dunham took young Maya back to Indonesia in 1976 to live with Soetoro’s mother, while Barack moved into his grandparents’ apartment on Beretania Street while he finished his high school years at Punahou.

“We spent summers with him, we spent winters with him and there were a lot of letters in between,” Maya said.

She, too, was homeschooled by Dunham until 1981, when Maya enrolled at the Jakarta International School and then, at age 14, returned in 1984 to enter Punahou.

“It was an extraordinary childhood,” Soetoro-Ng said. “She was such an interesting and vigorously intellectual woman. I owe everything to her example. Her life of service is something to which we should all aspire.”

Dewey later traveled with Dunham to the same village in Kenya where Obama’s father came from and — decades later — saw a video of Obama in the same village near a building that arranged micro loans.

Obama had arrived at the place where his mother had helped so many people years before.

“He followed in her footsteps and didn’t even know it,” Dewey said. “I know, because he certainly would have said something about it because his mother meant so much to him.”

It was a moment that brought Dewey full circle to the woman she had mentored and grew to admire — a woman whose work she believes could influence the course of U.S. policy.

“Sen. Obama often speaks of his mother’s dedication to helping people,” Dewey said. “How he was raised is part of how he will be as president.”

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[Fred Nerks]

Alice Dewey, PhD Professor Emeritus

B.A. (1950), M.A. (1955) and Ph.D. (1959) from Racliffe College, Harvard University.

I did my doctoral research in Java, Indonesia, in 1952-1954 and have been studying Javanese society ever since, with additional field work among the Maori of New Zealand (1959-60) and among the Javanese community in New Caldonia (1963-64).

I joined the anthropology faculty at the University of Hawai'i in 1963 and have been here ever since.

Research Interests: Economic Anthropology, especially markets; social structure; peasant societies; social change; kinship; Javanese culture.

Selected Writings: In preparation Traditional Powers for a Modern King: The Investiture of Sultan Hamengku Buwono X.

1993 Past Experiences and Problems in Implementing Programs in Poverty Alleviation. In A Review of Poverty Alleviation Efforts in Indonesia, with Michael Dove, N. Dwi Retnandari, and Loekman Soetrisno, for BAPPENAS, Indonesia, pp. 103-135.

1988 Competition, Reciprocity and the Olympic Games. In The Olympics and East/West and South/North Exchange, edited by Kang Shin-pyo, John MacAloon and Roberto DaMatto. The Institute for Ethnological Studies, Hanyang University, pp. 529-537.

1985 Boundary and Batik: A Study of Ambiguous Categories. In Cultural Values and Human Ecology in Southeast Asia, edited by Karl L. Hutterer, A. Terry Rambo and George Lovelace. Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, No. 27, University of Michigan Press.

1970 Ritual as a Mechanism for Urban Adaptation. Man 5:438-448. 1962 Trade and Social Control. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 92:177-190.

1962 Peasant Marketing in Java. N.Y.: Free Press.

source

[SvenMagnussen]

“Maya and her mother returned to Honolulu in 1973 and, for three years, lived with Barack on Poki Street, just ‘ewa of Punahou School.

“My father did not live with us at that time,” Maya said. “They lived apart. They were still together and still wanted to make a go of the marriage.”

Dunham took young Maya back to Indonesia in 1976 to live with Soetoro’s mother, while Barack moved into his grandparents’ apartment on Beretania Street while he finished his high school years at Punahou.”

If Obama was a U.S. citizen in 1973, then he would have been eligible to be named as a dependent on Lolo and SAD Soetoro’s 1973 tax return.