Here is the thread from the former teacher "remembering" his birth.
“I may be the only person left who specifically remembers his birth. His parents are gone, his grandmother is gone, the obstetrician who delivered him is gone,” said Nelson, referring to Dr. Rodney T. West, who died in February at the age of 98. Here’s the story: Nelson was having dinner at the Outrigger Canoe Club on Waikiki Beach with Dr. West, the father of her college friend, Jo-Anne. Making conversation, Nelson turned to Dr. West and said: “‘So, tell me something interesting that happened this week,’” she recalls. His response: “Well, today, Stanley had a baby. Now that’s something to write home about.” The new mother was Stanley (later referred to by her middle name of Ann) Dunham, and the baby was Barack Hussein Obama.
then it was found out that the doctor retired from “the practice of medicine” in 1955.
I’ve learned from decades of experience never to challenge my wife’s memory. So from a male perspective, this degree of specificity regarding words spoken nearly 50 years ago seems most suspect. But then again, what I forget and what my wife can remember would probably fill a book.
Stanley admittedly is an unusual name for a mother, but even conceding that point, how could someone remember this kind of minutiae for 5 decades? It would be a very different matter had there been good reason to reinforce the memory, such as reading about “mama Stanley” and her mixed-race son in the local paper 2-3 years later. But that’s not at all what happened. Like most moms, Stanley didn’t appear in local papers, she wasn’t a local celebrity, she soon moved to Indonesia etc.
So my challenge is to women (above a certain age): can ANY of you remember ANY conversation from 1961 with this degree of specificity? Does hearing that a woman had such a memory pass the basic “sniff test” of authenticity, or does it set off alarm bells? Just curious.