Obama Sr probably did not even tell his father that he has a white girl. However, taking on another wife was a good thing. Thus, Obama Sr’s father would have been willing to send air fare money. Obama Sr calculated that the minute his father saw Ann, the entire thing would explode. This would convince Ann that her desire to be married to Obama Sr was futile. This was the out that Obama Sr knew would happen. And it took the heat off him and put it on his father for causing the break up.
To smooth things over so that Ann's life was not totally ruined, Obama Sr got his father to finance Ann's flight back to Washington State. The idea of continuing her education back in her old stomping grounds had a great appeal to Ann. Also, going direct to Washington State and not stopping in Hawaii was a way to bypass mother Madelyn, who was mad as a hen that her daughter got pregnant to a black man. With news that the marriage thing was futile, Madelyn would have made Ann's life real miserable. Hence, a direct flight to Seattle (or Vancouver BC) was a way to distance herself from her mother. Ann could let her mother know about the failure to put a marriage together from Seattle, Washington without the direct heat from a ballistic mother.
I know other accounts say that Ann returned with child to Hawaii after giving birth to Baby O. However, none of these accounts say that time, the international airport in Honolulu was just being built, and Stanley would not have been able to fly directly from Kenya to Honolulu, but only through Seattle.
So, when Ann went to the airport to fly to Washington State, the airline told her to stay in Kenya and have the baby. She shows up on Mercer Island with her friend, Susan Blake three weeks after the birth. She complains that she does not know how to do diapers and asks Susan to change them for her. Perhaps when she had the newborn baby O in Kenya, there was an alternative to diapers.
I hate to leave this on the subject of diapers, but I think that it dramatizes the stench of this entire situation. What we have her is a diaper load and lots of explaining to do from the President(?).
Interesting theoretical storyline but the one thing that doesn’t fit is the divorce decree between 0bama Sr and Stanley Ann.
Interesting theoretical storyline but the one thing that doesn’t fit is the divorce decree between 0bama Sr and Stanley Ann. Unless they actually did marry (on Maui?) before heading out to Kenya.
You are forgetting what is already known about the relationship Ann had with her parents. Her former classmates on Mercer Island have all testified that Ann and her father were often at loggerheads and Madelyn was the peace maker. You are also forgetting the time and how people reacted to inter racial relationships. “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” wasn’t made until 1967 and yet it caused a stir even then, 6 years after Jr was born. Girls in 1961 who became pregnant were sent to a “sick aunt’s” until after they had given birth and the baby was placed for adoption. That was why there was a proliferation of homes for unwed mothers. You will find many adoption message boards for that period of time. Girls who became pregnant in HI were sent to the mainland to give birth and then returned after the event. Madelyn always insisted her daughter had married Obama Sr even when asked why no marriage license was ever found. She also told journalist David Mendell that she didn’t trust people from other countries and that Obama Sr was “straaaaaaange” with an emphasis on the elongated a. She more than likely knew that she and her husband would be responsible for the baby Ann was pregnant with but she was also of the generation thinking that “good girls didn’t”. Considering her position at Bankoh and that her co-workers didn’t know until the 1970’s that she had a grandchild, she would want to preserve her daughter’s honor and lend a legitimacy to the birth of that grandchild, and the way to do this was to register the birth which in turn generated the birth announcement. Think of how easy it would be to mention that poor Ann had gotten married but the marriage didn’t work out and now she was left to raise a child on her own.
By all accounts(I have found no evidence to suggest otherwise) Obama Sr arrived in HI in 1959 and did not leave until June 1962, when he left by cruise ship for his cross country tour before attending Harvard.