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Article I saw today. For the record:

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From The Sunday TimesNovember 23, 2008

Long-range love of Obama’s absent mother A cache of private letters obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the influences that helped shape the young Obama Ann Dunham's time in Indonesia was spent as a programme officer for women's work

Christine Finn in Honolulu and Sarah Baxter In his autobiographical memoir, Barack Obama’s mother is almost as distant a figure as his absent Kenyan father: America’s president-elect was largely brought up by his grandparents in Hawaii. But a trove of private letters obtained by The Sunday Times highlights her devotion to her son and her struggle to make ends meet as an anthropologist in Indonesia.

It was as a free-spirited student in Hawaii that Ann Dunham fell pregnant and married Obama’s father at 18, at a time when interracial unions were still illegal in many parts of America. They divorced when Obama was two and she later married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian. It was the start of a long love affair with his country, although the marriage did not last.

Dunham died at 52 of ovarian cancer in 1995, leaving behind a 1,000-page doctoral thesis on peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia, which friends still hope will gain her academic recognition. They believe her support for micro-financing projects and women’s work in Indonesia influenced Obama’s determination to build a grassroots campaign for president - and may yet shape his economic agenda in office.

Alice Dewey, a professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii, was Dunham’s close friend and thesis supervisor. For her, Obama will always be “Barry”, as his mother called him. Dunham also had a daughter from her second marriage, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who is now a teacher in Hawaii.

“I have a vivid picture of Ann on a couch, Maya going and sitting on her lap and Barry, not wanting to be left out, sitting on Maya’s lap - and then all falling to the ground laughing,” Dewey said. “They were a very close family, very affectionate. She was very proud of him, talked about him and would show his picture all the time.”

Dewey has been quietly championing Dunham’s pioneering anthropology. Interviewed in her office in Honolulu after Obama’s election victory, she said: “When Barry began his campaign two years ago, I began my own to get his mother recognised.”

The three volumes of Dunham’s unpublished PhD on blacksmithing – a study of the economics of a village industry - have pride of place in her office. Dewey has also kept her friend’s private correspondence, in which Dunham wrote affectionately of her children. “Maya hates me to brag,” one letter reads, “but I am forced to mention that she made high honours this term.” It goes on to describe how “Barry is working in New York this year, saving his pennies so he can travel”.

Her son’s job, according to Dunham, was to write reports for a consultancy on social, economic and political conditions in the Third World. In those days Obama was a young radical. “He calls it ‘working for the enemy’ because some of the reports are written for commercial firms that want to invest in those countries,” Dunham wrote. “He seems to be learning a lot about the realities of international finance and politics . . . that information will stand him in good stead for the future.”

During Obama’s election campaign, Dunham was criticised for having seemingly “abandoned” her son in Hawaii while she led a freewheeling life as a perpetual student in Indonesia. In addition to pursuing her studies, she worked as a programme officer specialising in women’s work for the Ford Foundation, a non-profit organisation.

Her letters were often full of money worries - asking on one occasion whether she would have to pay out-of-state tuition fees for university or whether she might be able to get an academic job in America.

In a letter to the chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Hawaii, she explained she had to put her own studies on hold to pay for Obama’s. “The major reason for the delay in my return to Hawaii [was] the need to work to put my son through college,” she wrote. “I am happy to say that he graduated from Columbia [University] in June, so that I am free to continue my own studies.”

She was in her element conducting fieldwork among village artisans, Dewey recalled. Previously unpublished photographs show her in flowing batik skirts among Indonesian peasants. Pictures of Obama’s mother were shown at an academic conference on her work at the University of Hawaii in September, attended by her daughter.

“I was sitting here squirming,” said Soetoro-Ng. “I really have a hard time after all these years looking at images of my mom without crying, especially now when so much is happening. There are so many reasons I want her to be here to offer guidance and love.”

Soetoro-Ng believes her mother has had a lasting impact on Obama’s politics and outlook. “We were both so incredibly fortunate to be raised by a woman who was at once really local in honouring and respecting local ways to do things and at the same time truly global in her thinking,” she said.

Dunham also instilled habits of hard work in her children. Dewey recalled that when the family came to stay, she would often be up at 3.30am, working on her own studies. “Ann made every minute squeak, she got so much out of it. But she didn’t appear burdened. Barry has that same characteristic.”

When Obama lived with his mother in Indonesia, she used to wake him at 4am to study English, telling him: “This is no picnic for me either, Buster.”

Obama returned at the age of 10 to live in Hawaii with his grandparents but continued to spend Christmas and the summer holidays in Indonesia. He spent more time with his mother than it appeared, according to Dewey. “It was similar to being sent away to school,” she said.

At 14, he went to Punahou,a prestigious private school in Hawaii. His teenage growth spurt amazed his mother. “She was stunned. She went to pick him up at the airport and looked in the crowd for a child, and suddenly this figure loomed over her. I don’t think she ever got over it,” Dewey said.

A fortnight before the election, Obama took a break from the campaign trail to visit his ailing grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, whose death was announced the day before his victory. He said that his mother had died from cancer before he had a chance to see her one last time. “I want to make sure I don’t make the same mistake twice,” he said.

His mother’s initial treatment appeared successful, but she died within 10 days of the cancer’s recurrence. “I think Barry, like me, hadn’t realised how quick it was going to be,” Dewey said.

She believes Dunham’s work will shape Obama’s presidency. “When I look back over Ann’s work, I can see how much she worked from the bottom up. She found out what people needed and how to help them. She got advice from the grassroots, just as Barry is starting to do. He gets a group of specialists together and they all sit down and talk and come up with a solution.”

The first chapter of Dunham’s thesis is about to be published in Indonesian, with a quote from Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father. “I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known and that what is best in me, I owe to her,” he wrote.

Dewey hopes an English version will follow. In the meantime, she thinks of her friend “up there” on a cloud with “Toot”, Obama's grandmother, saying, “Go, Barry, go!”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5213328.ece