Until I hear from UH at Manoa I won’t even know if they returned to HI immediately after he received his Phd from UW at Madison in 1953. (Info on both Orland and Thelma is sketchy at best, I had sent UH an email back on Dec.11 and still have not heard from them)The Dunhams didn’t live in that home, contrary to the false story which “The Honolulu Adertiser” published in Nov./08. The Dunhams lived in two homes on Oahu prior to moving into the apartment building on S. Beretania St. First home they lived in was 2277 Kamehameha Ave. and the second home they lived in was 2234 University Ave., they moved from the house on University Ave. into the apartment at S. Beretania in 1967 after Ann and Jr went to Indonesia. Obama Sr, at that time, lived in a small, single story home located at 625 11th Ave. in the St Louis Heights district. All the addresses for the Dunhams and Obama Sr(when he originally arrived in HI in 1959 he lived in a room at the Atherton Y.M.C.A. across from UH) were located within a 1/2 mile of the University while the address in the birth announcement was located more than 7 miles from the University in the most expensive zip code of all of HI.
My theory is that Madelyn provided the address because she knew it was a “safe” one to use from her job as mortgage administrator at Bankoh.
When I learned who the owners of the property were I began to speculate if Ann had indeed lived in the small 400 sq ft cottage located in the backyard of the property. I wondered if perhaps the couple hired her to help Thelma with their three children, Andrea born March 15,1955, Mia born 1959 and Scott born 1960. I discarded this idea knowing that Ann had never even babysat while she was a teenager and had no clue as to how to handle children. Then I wondered if perhaps the Lefforge family had planned on adopting Jr since their two daughters had been adopted. The mere presence of the birth announcement in the papers negated that idea! Finally when it was announced that the adjoining property owner stated the Obamas had never lived there then I was left with my original premise that Madelyn supplied a safe address which she knew through her work as the mortgage administrator at Bankoh. Madelyn basically was the mortgage department at that time!
Another matter with that particular address was the distance from Honolulu, a minor problem today with the satellite medical clinics in the area but a major problem back in 1961. Even Frank Marshall Davis had moved closer to the urban center in 1958 due to the travelling distance.Even the home for unwed mothers(The Booth Memorial Home in 1961) was located around the corner from the Kapiolani.
Before “The Honolulu Advertiser” published their false story about homes Jr had lived in they phoned the current owner of the home (since 1979) and told her Jr had begun his life there, she replied, “I didn’t know.” The one person who could actually verify that Ann and Jr had in fact lived in the small cottage in the back yard would be Andrea Lefforge, who was a 6 1/2 year old girl at the time.
Great stuff and thanks very much we need much more of this and less of the Star Traveler type comments. Let the truth fall where it may.