Replies

By David Maraniss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 22, 2008;

EXCERPT: 5 pages

(Reading between the lines)

In the family lore, Obama was accepted into graduate school at the New School in New York and at Harvard, and if he had chosen the New School there would have been enough scholarship money for his wife and son to come along.

HARVARD HAS NEVER MENTIONED THE ILLUSTRIOUS FATHER OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AS AN ALUMNI. WONDER WHY?

However, the story goes, he opted for Harvard because of the world-class academic credentials a Crimson degree would bring. But there is an unresolved part of the story: Did Ann try to follow him to Cambridge? Her friends from Mercer Island were left with that impression. Susan Botkin, Maxine Box and John W. Hunt all remember Ann showing up in Seattle late that summer with little Barry, as her son was called.

THAT WOULD BE THE SUMMER OF 1961 THEY ARE REFERRING TO, CORRECT?
AND JUST LIKE NEIL ABERCROMBIE, THEY CAREFULLY - TOO CAREFULLY IMO, REFER TO ‘HER’ AS ANN. WAS THAT INSURANCE FOR LATER...WHEN WE FIND OUT WHO ANN REALLY WAS?

“She was on her way from her mother’s house to Boston to be with her husband,” Botkin recalled. “[She said] he had transferred to grad school and she was going to join him.

HE DIDN’T LEAVE HAWAII UNTIL JUNE 22, 1962. THERE’S A YEAR MISSING SOMEWHERE...

And I was intrigued with who she was and what she was doing.

SO AM I. PARTICULARLY WHO SHE WAS.

Stanley was an intense person . . . but I remember that afternoon, sitting in my mother’s living room, drinking iced tea and eating sugar cookies. She had her baby and was talking about her husband, and what life held in store for her. She seemed so confident and self-assured and relaxed. She was leaving the next day to fly on to Boston.”

HMM. SUSAN, YOU SAY ‘SHE’ CAME TO VISIT YOU WITH A BABY, AT YOUR MOTHER’S HOUSE. WHERE WAS ‘SHE’ LIVING? AND YOU CALLED HER STANLEY. ANN/STANLEY - ARE THEY INTERCHANGABLE NAMES?

But as Botkin and others later remembered it, something happened in Cambridge, and Stanley Ann returned to Seattle. They saw her a few more times, and they thought she even tried to enroll in classes at the University of Washington, before she packed up and returned to Hawaii.

NOW IT’S STANLEY ANN. IS THIS THE SAME PERSON WHO WAS LISTED IN THE POLK AT THE SEATTLE ADDRESS AS ANNA?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082201679_5.html

Excerpted :

HARVARD HAS NEVER MENTIONED THE ILLUSTRIOUS FATHER OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AS AN ALUMNI. - WONDER WHY?

However, the story goes, he opted for Harvard because of the world-class academic credentials a Crimson degree would bring.

But there is an unresolved part of the story: Did Ann try to follow him to Cambridge? Her friends from Mercer Island were left with that impression.

Susan Botkin, Maxine Box and John W. Hunt all remember Ann showing up in Seattle late that summer with little Barry, as her son was called.

THAT WOULD BE THE SUMMER OF 1961 THEY ARE REFERRING TO, CORRECT?

[snip]

HE DIDN’T LEAVE HAWAII UNTIL JUNE 22, 1962. - THERE’S A YEAR MISSING SOMEWHERE...

Read more at # 328.

Thanks, Fred Nerks.

Though Obama Had to Leave to Find Himself, It Is Hawaii That Made His Rise Possible

An interesting note about the snack bar crowd is that, even decades later, they all pronounce the first name of their Kenyan friend "Bear-ick" -- with the accent on the first syllable. That is how he referred to himself, they said. In Hawaii at least, they never heard him call himself "Buh-rock," with the accent on the second syllable, the pronunciation his son would adopt in his adult life.

...

While the scene in the book includes two friends who were with him when he arrived late for a first date with Ann, few members of the snack bar crowd remember the Obama-Dunham relationship. Hal Abercrombie said he never saw them together.

...

On Feb. 2, 1961, against Madelyn's hopes, and against the desires of Obama's father back in Kenya, Ann and Obama hopped a plane to Maui and got married.

How did they always have so much money available to fly all over the world? Ann and Barry flew everywhere all the time!

Because (in the 1960's) it was so expensive, flying was rare, and it was an "event."?

When the waiter arrived, Obama tore into him, shouting that he was an important person on his way to Harvard and would not tolerate such treatment, Abercrombie recalled. "He was berating the guy and condescending every time the waiter came to our table. There was a superiority and an arrogance about it that I didn't like."

That is the first resemblance I've seen between the two 0bama's.