Posted on 02/21/2009 2:58:50 PM PST by BP2
The first article which I mentioned in my post is found here and I never found it in a U.S. publication but in a Dubai publication, it details the original meeting of Jr and Frank Marshall Davis:
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080904/LIFE/733109695
In the following interview printed in “The Guardian” a fellow classmate and Indonesian friend of Jr. mentions Jr being absent but he says it was the fifth grade so it would be 1971.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/26/barackobama-uselections2008
Even David Maraniss in his article in “The Washington Post” mentions that it is difficult to discover the truth behind financing for Obama Sr. who told different stories. That article can be found here about midway down:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082201679_pf.html
In the article it tells of Obama Sr telling a journalist that:
“Obama told Hirozawa that he had enough money to stay in Hawaii only for two semesters unless he applied for a scholarship.”
Following through, I went to the East-West Center website and discovered that although students were accepted as students of the East-West Center starting in September, 1960 there were no actual buildings specifically built and designated as “The East-West Center” until September, 1962 after Obama Sr had left Hawaii and before Ann and Jr had returned to Hawaii. Further research led to a “Time” article at the following link:
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,897832,00.html
In the article you will find the following about those chosen to be East-West Center students:
“The bait: two-year scholarships, valued at $9,000, including transportation, books, board and room, $50 a month spending money, and a two-month study tour of the mainland.”
Now if you will remember when Obama Sr left Hawaii he mentioned he would be going on a tour of the mainland prior to going on to Harvard.He actually toured for 3 months arriving at Harvard on a “crisp, cool autumn day”. Also I would point out that while Obama Sr originally lived at the Atherton Y.M.C.A. by 1960 he was living in a “small, single story home at 625 11th Ave.” in the St Louis Heights area. The tour and the change of address indicate he had some money and interviews with him did not mention any difficulty with money while in Hawaii. This was not the case when he went to Harvard as is mentioned in the following article: (Sorry it is 7 pages long)
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/09/21/a_fathers_charm_absence/
In the article the following is mentioned on page 5:
“During his time at Harvard, Obama met another woman. Her name was Ruth Nidesand, a teacher and a person of some means. Obama confided in friends that he was attracted to Nidesand in part because, “she was able to pay for some of the social activities that he could not afford,” said Omolo.”
No mention was made of the same problem while Obama Sr was living in Hawaii and Hawaii was the most expensive state at the time considering transportation costs of supplying the essentials that other states take for granted. We also know that in April 1962, Elizabeth Mooney Kirk wrote a letter to Tom Mboya asking that another sponsor be found to fund Obama Sr’s way to graduate school preferable at Harvard. Kirk would be unable to continue sponsoring him as she had two step-children who would be attending college.
That information as quoted:
According to a letter on file in the Mboya papers at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, “most” of Obama Sr.’s early expenses in the United States were covered by an international literacy expert named Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, who had traveled widely in Kenya. Kirk wrote to Mboya in May 1962 to request additional funds to “sponsor Barack Obama for graduate study, preferably at Harvard.” She said she would “like to do more” to assist the young man but had two stepchildren ready for college.
Can be found here:
http://kenyatogether.blogspot.com/2008/04/mboya-send-obama-to-school.html
Now if you will notice the wording as contained in the Mboya papers Kirk funded “most” of Obama Sr’s expenses, which raises the question as to how he could afford to move from the Y.M.C.A. where he lived in 1959 to a home in 1960. It also raises the question as to where he got the funds for a tour of mainland U.S.A. before his arrival at Harvard. One way he could have done so was to continue getting funding from Elizabeth Mooney Kirk AND applying to be one of the first students of the soon to be built East-West Center.
"During his 1959 trip to the United States, the 29-year-old Mboya raised enough money for scholarships for 81 young Kenyans, including Obama Sr., with the help of the African-American Students Foundation. Records show that almost 8,000 individuals contributed. Early supporters included baseball star Jackie Robinson, who gave $4,000, and actors Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier.
There was enormous excitement when the Britannia aircraft took off for New York with the future Kenyan elite on board. After a few weeks of orientation, the students were dispatched to universities across the United States to study subjects that would help them govern Kenya after the departure of the British. Obama Sr. was interested in economics and was sent to Hawaii, where he met, and later married, a Kansas native named Ann Dunham. Barack Jr. was born in August 1961.
I seriously doubt that a man with as high opinion of himself as BO, Sr. would have willingly chosen to study at UH without a scholarship. UH definitely lacked academic clout, as your link to the East-West Center's history correctly reports: "Though first-rate in a few fields, such as tropical agriculture and marine biology, the university was best known for a summer hula course, low faculty pay and an uninspired board of regents." Having a UH degree didn't exactly embellish one's resume, which would also explain his drive to go to Harvard -- a graduate degree that would go a long way towards obscuring the below-par undergraduate school.
Although the East-West Center wasn't formerly established until after Sr. graduated, the article does say that "the university set up the center as a confusing blend of graduate and undergraduate studies" in 1960. I would think Russian was on the list, as a hot-ticket item back in the early '60's. (Lolo Soetoro, BTW, was a student at the East-West Center. The A&E Biography briefly shows a shot of Lolo's UH ID badge, in which the date is obscured, but which clearly indicates "East-West Center." He looks incredibly young in the photo ID.)
Maraniss lends more weight to Sr.'s "contemporary" quote than he does his own paper's reporting, but considering the pathetically low journalistic standards the Hawaiian papers have demonstrated throughout the campaign, I doubt they were much better back then. Sr. was also something of a BS artist, like Jr., so if the papers did quote him correctly, he may have been talking through his hat.
I agree with you about the unexplained income needed to live off-campus and tour the US, but I don't believe the funds came from UH. It's more likely that the Dunhams supported him in exchange for his agreement to be Barry's surrogate father. In a sense, he would have been the perfect choice: a man of some prestige who was hell-bent on leaving Hawaii, as evidenced by his acceleration of his studies which enabled him to graduate in three years, and his anxiety to get to Harvard before he got called back to Kenya. He would play the role only briefly, and then they'd be done with him. Ann threw the monkey-wrench into the arrangement, apparently, by contacting him for some reason -- perhaps in support of her fantasizing to her son about his awesome birth father. Or perhaps it was the other way around: he was down and out in Kenyan political circles in 1971, and flat broke. The visit to Hawaii may have been a form of blackmail.
Even if Obama is the biological father (which I question) he might have required monetary persuasion to assent to paternity -- an issue that Madelyn Dunham would have been desparate to resolve, even by purchase.
On the topic of his off-campus living, I don't know if you've seen the material on this unlikely site, posted by former UH classmates. It's a long, slow load with lots of pics, but when it's done, search on REMINISCENSES, (about halfway down) and you'll find three photos and this testimonial in .jpg format. The resolution is very poor, so I've typed it out:
I CALLED HIM OBAMA
I travelled from Los Angeles via Boston. Obama came from East Africa. Somehow we ended up on a small island in the midst of the Pacific. Our mutual purpose was education. We shared classes together and an occasional break over a drink and some pupusl.
For any of us to say we knew Obama well would be difficult. He was private man with academic achievement his foremost goal. He lived somewhat like a hermit in a small room up in the valleys of Manoa. I visited him on my Lambretta and wondered how he sustained himself outside of his focused attention to his academic skills.
Then there was the other side. Most of my closest friends were studying at the East West Center. Obama was a student at the University. Bureaucratically, this was a distinction. But after you got to know your classmates those barriers fell aside.
Obama had little reservation about joining a party. And it was on those occasions that his gregarious nature took over. I remember him as a spirited interlocutor -- you name the issue he was ready. Fun was fun, but there are also those longer lasting impressions that here was a man with a keen intellect.
I left Hawaii in mid-term to join the Foreign Service and lost contact with Obama. We learned of his death in Kenya. The New York Times and CNN offered glimpses of his son's emergence at Harvard and in Chicago.
Prompted by Senator Obama's book, "Dreams from My Father," one of us found a photo which recalls a period not yet fully reported. We decided to offer our reflections.
Robert Ruenitz
The "not yet fully reported" is an understatement, to say the least. The question is, will it ever be fully and/or honestly reported?
It does verify a few things: the E-W Center did exist, if only on paper; Obama lived in a house, by himself, off-campus. (I assume it's the same address that's been reported by the Honolulu Advertiser.) And Ruenitz, a classmate, also wondered how Sr. supported himself.
Oops — my mistake. REMINISCENSES won’t get you there (it’s not text). Use “Bob Ruenitz” (no quotes) instead.
I have the letter at the website in my favs thanks. One reason Sr would have been anxious to move out of the Y.M.C.A. was their policy of No Alcohol! If you will notice not one of Sr’s friends with the exception of Neil Abercrombie mentions knowing Ann. Abercrombie would have a reason for knowing Ann since he was teaching at UH when she returned from Indonesia and the Dunhams lived near Abercrombie prior to Ann marrying Lolo.
To date I have not found a single student from the infamous 1960 Russian language class, and journalists interviewed a former student from a few years later, not the 1960 class. That student named Ella Lury Wiswell and Isabella Tripianky as the teachers of the class and yet the only mention of Isabella Tripianky can be found on a blog and in an excerpt of the book by Michael Patrick Leahy. Aside from the “official story” the only person to verify that Ann went to a Russian language class was Maxine Box who mentioned receiving a letter from Ann in which Ann said she had met a male student in the class.
It’s surprising that Sr didn’t mention the difficulty of living in HI with its high cost of living and yet he did complain in Cambridge. He got money from somewhere so he could move into the home in 1960 which is before the Dunhams properly entered the picture and he was also able to send money and clothing back to Kenya. (as per numerous interviews with Kezia)He also had the funds to undertake a three month tour of the mainland before his arrival at Harvard so yes it is an under-reported time. From photos of Sr at parties in 1960-61 Ann is definitely not present, but the parties took place at Arnie and Susie Nachminoff’s base housing.(Some aspects of base housing are similar the world over! lol)
I might point out that Robert Ruenitz was a member of the Foreign Council at one time but little can be found about him now.
Finally I am including a 1965 article from “Time” which mentions the haphazard running of the East-West Center from the time of its inception.(I tend to trust older articles from “Time” because journalists were actually journalists at the time compared to what they are now!)
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,833505,00.html
There is an interesting article in “Time” about the Kenyan student airlift which I will see if I have in my favs. It was written in 1960 or so and explains the funding acquired for its execution. I found it when I was searching for info on Tom Mboya.
Another question which I haven’t been able to answer is:
How did Obama Sr manage to travel to HI in 1971 considering that the Boston.com article clearly stated that he had his passport pulled for several years after Mboya’s death in 1969?
As an aside, I noticed that Mboya’s widow, Pamela, passed away suddenly in South Africa in January of this year. I read a very short article which said she passed away suddenly while receiving treatment in South Africa. Her daughter, Dr Susan Mboya, now lives in Cincinnati and works for P&G.
I give that story a -10 in credibility, and have since I first read it. In a word, it's nonsense. The so-called author starts off with the exciting story of Sr.'s witness of Mboya's assassination, followed many several graphs later with the admission that there's no proof of the story. To wit:
"...During a visit from his old school friend, Zane, in 1974, Obama confided that he had seen Mboya's killer and claimed to be the only witness who could identify him. According to an biography of Mboya, "Tom Mboya: The Man Kenya Wanted to Forget," nine eyewitnesses to the shooting failed to identify Njoroge in a police lineup.
Obama is not mentioned in the book. If Obama identified the killer, or tried to, press accounts of the trial are silent about it."
Then we have Susan Mboya's testimony that her father "was aware that Obama had a child in Hawaii, and was not happy about Obama's plans to leave his son behind," and "In one of a series of letters the two men exchanged, Mboya chastised his protégé, Susan Mboya said."
But for some unexplained (cough, cough) reason, "She declined to release the letters."
Uh, huh. Susan Mboya was an early supporter of Obama's campaign, but she didn't manage to get into the act, supporting Abercrombie's memories of the great love affair, until late September, 2008? In one story, in the Boston Globe? With no proof, other than her say-so -- just like the pulled passport, and Sr.'s witness of Mboya's death. It's all true, it's just that, well, there's no independent proof....
As mentioned earlier here is the 1960 “Time” article about Tom Mboya. On page 8 it mentions the “Jackie Robinson - Harry Belafonte fund” which Mboya oversees and which has already been used to send 81 Kenyans to the U.S. to be educated.
While Susan Mboya has refused to release her father’s papers, some of them may be among the personal papers and correspondence Mboya had with students who participated in the airlift. Those papers are at Stanford and personal correspondence is listed as one of the items in the holdings.
Of interest in the “Time” article, it mentions Pam Odede was sent to Ohio as one of the students. Pam would later become Mboya’s wife and I am sure it is no coincidence that their daughter Susan now lives in Ohio.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,894716,00.html
With your mention of the Boston Globe article, I noticed that it mentions the divorce of Sr and Ruth the previous year of 1973. According to all reports Sr and Ruth were married for a total of 7 years(which would put the year of their marriage at 1966) and yet from all I have been able to find out Mark Obama Nidesand was born in 1964 and David was born in 1969. Another part of the Boston Globe article which doesn’t ring true is that Sr’s two oldest children, Roy and Auma, lived with Sr and Ruth. This doesn’t fly in the face of Kezia’s claims that she didn’t know about Ruth until after the two ran into each other at the hospital after one of Sr’s many car accidents. It is definitely one extremely tangled web!
Ack -- ten pages that somehow read like they could have been written about Obama's campaign. (Patrice Lamumba worked out well, didn't he?) The reference is on Page 8, for anyone who cares to bypass the propaganda.
If the Boston Globe reported that Susan Mboya "declined to release the letters," wouldn't that indicate that a) the letters is question are not at the Stanford archive; or b) if they are at the Stanford archive, she has right of refusal for release; or c) the letters don't exist. (I choose Door C, Alex.)
Normally, collections stored at University libraries are publicly accessible, but as we learned with the Annenberg Challenge records stored at the UC libary, those rules aren't always followed, particularly if the information pertains to Barack Obama.
The article which I linked to was written in 1960 so although it may read like Jr’s campaign I trust the writing of a journalist who actually practiced the art compared to the presstitutes of today. In 1960’s Africa, independence for former colonies was big news and such news would focus on those fighting for independence as the article did with Tom Mboya, especially considering Jomo Kenyatta wasn’t available to interview. I did scroll through the Mboya holdings at Stanford and one section does describe “personal correspondence including letters between Mboya and students of the airlift”. I would trust the listings at Stanford more so than I would trust the presstitute who conveniently wrote that Susan Mboya refused to release her father’s papers when his papers are held at Stanford. Presstitutes these days are lazy as was evident during the past two years taking much for granted, especially within Jr’s fairytale. Also if I remember correctly Susan Mboya was quite young when her father was killed so it is difficult to believe that she is accurate in her memories or even that she read every single article within her father’s papers. She presently is the head of an organization which raises funds to send African women to the U.S. for an education imitating her father. Apologies for the late reply, I was looking to see how old Susan was but was not successful although I did find a few more articles to add to my “dirt in woodpile” file. Tom and Pamela were married in 1962 and had their first daughter, Maureen, in 1963. Susan was born sometime after that and their son, Lucas, was 21 months old when his father was killed. It was quite interesting reading about the Mboya family and I was struck by the fact that Susan has returned to Kenya and now represents Coca Cola but I haven’t found a date when she returned to the country yet.
Did she vote in the election before she returned to Kenya, and did the girls in her airlift program have her support when they worked for Jr’s campaign?
Having grown up in that era, I can agree with you -- to a point. Certainly journalists had a higher standard, but then, as now, reporters -- and more importantly their editors -- had agendas leaning left or right. I do apologize for the sarcasm in my reply, but after two years of reading journalistic nonsense, I have little patience for, or interest in, Kenyan history.
I did scroll through the Mboya holdings at Stanford and one section does describe “personal correspondence including letters between Mboya and students of the airlift”. I would trust the listings at Stanford more so than I would trust the presstitute who conveniently wrote that Susan Mboya refused to release her father’s papers when his papers are held at Stanford.
If you don't trust the "presstitute's" writing that Susan Mboya refused to release her father's papers, why do you put so much faith in the actual existence of those particular letters she describes? Certainly, the relationship between Mboya and Obama was a contentious one. The now-famous Marxist paper Obama wrote in 1965, not long after his return from Harvard, was a direct attack on "the economic proposals of pro-Western ‘third way” leader Tom Mboya," as Greg Ransom of Prestopundit has reported in an excellent piece of research.
Obama hadn't suddenly become a communist upon his return to Kenya -- the commemorative written by Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. on the Cambodiana.org website gives us an idea, tactfully phrased, of his beliefs as a UH student in the early '60's:
"Barak and I were a part of a small group of foreign students who participated in group discussions in various places (Churches, sinagogues, junior colleges) around the campus and in town. Those discussions centered on the role and impact of former Soviet Union and China had in the developing countries. Barak, was more hopeful than I was about the role and the influence of these two major Communist countries in the developing nations in the world, because I had the opportunity to study in Europe, and in France, especially, I was more aware of the nature of communism than Barak was...
...We often were not on the same side, when discussing Communism in the developing countries."
And niether did Tom Mboya suddenly become pro-Western; both these men held ideologically opposite views of Kenya's future, and by all accounts, Obama was never shy in expressing those views -- even to the face of Kenyatta, who promptly banned him from government as a result.
Given that background, and the fact that Obama never confided a marriage to Ann Dunham of the existence of a son in the US to any of his classmates or friends in the US, why would he have confided it to Tom Mboya? To what possible advantage?
Also note, from the misleading description of the downfall of Sr. as presented in "Dreams" and quoted in Ransom's report, that the "official story" never portrayed Mboya and Obama as friends. You certainly don't get that impression by reading the Boston Globe piece.
My first, gut, reaction to that Globe story was, "Oh, Abercrombie (or the Obama campaign) felt the need to have someone other than the Hawaii Congressman (Susan Mboya) attest to the glorious love affair."
I am very tempted to say that Jr was the result of a one night stand and that Ann continued her puppy love infatuation with Sr after she arrived in WA state. As I have researched never have I ever seen such a convoluted story, and I am always left with more questions than answers. Although Sr worked in the Eonomics Dept in Kenya, I found it interesting that Tom Mboya was the Mnister of that department from 1964 until his death in 1969. He would have been directly responsible for Obama Sr and didn’t hesitate to cut him loose when he expressed his socialist opinions. The impression I am left with in regard to Obama Sr was that he thought too highly of himself and his big mouth affected his life to the detriment not only of himself but also his family. I will include an article which I found last night which you may or may not want to read which focuses on an American living in Kenya who assisted Mboya with his fund raising for the airlift. Pay close attention to the description of Jr’s paternal grandfather in the article.
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/magazine/-/434746/525930/-/view/printVersion/-/i13vxrz/-/index.html
I think it's somehow more complicated than that; if not, why go to the extraordinary lengths Obama has, to lie about it?
I will include an article which I found last night which you may or may not want to read which focuses on an American living in Kenya who assisted Mboya with his fund raising for the airlift. Pay close attention to the description of Jr’s paternal grandfather in the article.
Trust me, I read all of it (and save it), as nauseating as it may be.
I assume you refer to this line in that particular story:
"Although the young Obama Sr. left for the University of Hawaii before the first formal student airlift, he did maintain his friendship with the Hagbergs when he returned to Kenya. Paula has memories of Hussein cutting an intimidating figure, “tall, dignified and stern-faced, yet kind.”
Aside from the rather cryptic nature of that line, to believe it, you'd have to believe that Philip Ochieng is lying in his remembrance of the first Mboya airlift in 1959:
"Like Obama Senior, I too went to the US on the famous Tom Mboya Airlift of 1959 [when hundreds of Kenyan students were given scholarships to American universities]. I first met Obama Senior in Tom Mboya's Nairobi office [Mboya was then the secretary general of the Kenya Federation of Labour]. Obama and I met up again on returning to Nairobi and remained drinking buddies for many years."
Link. (Not the original, which is gone, but preserved on a blog.)
I don't see anything unusual, according to what I've read.
What do you mean his mother goes out of her way not to mention him in the 1980 divorce? He is clearly mentioned as the “oldest child in university”. Or are you saying he’s not mentioned by name? But his sister is referred to only as “youngest child”, and not by name. What exactly do you mean?
I believe Senior’s Christmas trip in 1971 was to re-adopt (or whatever) Barack after his adoption in Indonesia, so he get get the Punahou scholarship.
I believe Obama was paid off by the Dunhams to do/sign whatever to get it done.
The Dunhams paid for his living arrangements. They probably paid for the airline ticket too.
I'd like to know more about the “family business” Senior was into.
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