When the Mercer Island High School yearbooks began circulating in the spring of 1960, Stanley Ann ‘s senior year, classmates scribbled best wishes to friends and remembered slumber parties, one mother's exceptionally good chocolate cake and thoughts on some goofy boys.
Dunham wrote to Maxine Box: “Remember me when you are old and gray. Love & Luck, Stanley .” Seemingly out of the blue, her father had found a better opportunity — another furniture store, this one in Hawaii. “He just couldn't settle,” Box recalled.
“I remember she didn't want to go to Hawaii,” she added.
That was only the first surprise. Stanley Ann began classes at the University of Hawaii in 1960, and shortly after that, Box received a letter saying that her friend had fallen in love with a grad student. He was black, from Kenya and named Obama.
About that same time, another letter crossed the Pacific, this one heading to Africa. It was from Barack Obama Sr. to his mother, Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama. Though the letter didn't go into great detail, it said he had met a young woman named Ann (not Stanley ). There wasn't much on how they met or what the attraction was, but he announced their plans to wed.
The Dunhams weren't happy. Stanley Ann ‘s prospective father-in-law was furious. He wrote the Dunhams “this long, nasty letter saying that he didn't approve of the marriage,” Obama recounted his mother telling him in “Dreams.” “He didn't want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman.”
Parental objections didn't matter. For Stanley Ann , her new relationship with Barack Obama and weekend discussions seemed to be, in part, a logical extension of long coffeehouse sessions in Seattle and the teachings of Wichterman and Foubert. The forum now involved graduate students from the University of Hawaii. They spent weekends listening to jazz, drinking beer and debating politics and world affairs.
The self-assured and opinionated Obama spoke with a voice so deep that “he made James Earl Jones seem like a tenor,” said Neil Abercrombie, a Democratic congressman from Hawaii who was part of those regular gatherings.
While Obama was impatient and energized, Stanley Ann , whom Abercrombie described as “the original feminist,” was endlessly patient but quietly passionate in her arguments. She was the only woman in the group.
“I think she was attracted to his powerful personality,” Abercrombie said, “and he was attracted to her beauty and her calmness.”
Six months after they wed, another letter arrived in Kenya, announcing the birth of Barack Hussein Obama, born Aug. 4, 1961. Despite her husband's continued anger, Sarah Obama said in a recent interview, she “was so happy to have a grandchild in the U.S.”
When the same news hit Mercer Island, it dumbfounded Stanley ‘s classmates.
“I just couldn't imagine her life changing so quickly,” said Box, thinking about her independent-minded friend who had disdained marriage and motherhood.
Although he didn't say it at the time, Abercrombie privately feared that the relationship would be short-lived. Obama was one of the most ambitious, self-focused men he had ever met. After Obama was accepted to study at Harvard, Stanley Ann disappeared from the University of Hawaii student gatherings, but she did not accompany her husband to Harvard. Abercrombie said he rarely saw her after that.
“I know he loved Ann ,” Abercrombie said, but “I think he didn't want the impediment of being responsible for a family. He expected great things of himself and he was going off to achieve them.”
The marriage failed. Stanley Ann filed for divorce in 1964 and remarried two years later, when her son was 5. The senior Obama finished his work at Harvard and returned to Kenya, where he hoped to realize his big dreams of taking a place in the Kenyan government.
Years later, Abercrombie and another grad school friend looked up their old pal during a trip through Africa.
At that point, the senior Obama was a bitter man, according to the congressman, feeling that he had been denied due opportunities to influence the running of his country. “He was drinking too much; his frustration was apparent,” Abercrombie said.
To Abercrombie's surprise, Obama never asked about his ex-wife or his son.
Stanley Dunham was a wanderer and figured he would cash in selling furniture to new residents of the newest state of Hawaii. Madelyn quickly obtained her job as a mortgage administrator at Bankoh and the “official story” is that Stanley Armour figured Ann was too young to stay in WA and attend University. It must also be noted that stories have been told that Ann was also accepted at the University of Chicago, someone contacted that University and was told she had never applied there. I wonder if she got pregnant on purpose(as opposed to letting a celebration of JFK as President get carried away) as a way for her parents to send her back to WA away from any hint of scandal with them in new jobs in a new location?