greg orme obama's friend greg orme obama's friend

"I brood," Mr. Obama's friend Mr. Ramos said a few years ago. "I never picked up on that," Hagar said. And while they did enjoy marijuana, Mr. Ramos acknowledged, we played a lot more basketball than we smoked pot.. You have reached your limit of 4 free articles. Obama admits in "Dreams" that during high school he frequently smoked marijuana, drank alcohol, even used cocaine occasionally. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man," Obama wrote in "Dreams." Some, like Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, counted later acquaintances among political donors as friends. McLachlin said he survived a severe stroke shortly before Obama was elected president in 2008. Allman said the two couples sipped Champagne before going to the dance, and then an after-party. He attended a college basketball game with the first family the next day, and this week he and his wife hosted their annual barbecue for the other families, including those of the Obamas Chicago friends Eric Whitaker and Marty Nesbitt. They're not his wife and daughters, who came with him, but a trio of pals whose friendship dates back to Obama's high school days in Hawaii. After graduating in 1979, Maurer wound up at Stanford where he made the team as a walk on and found God. It was pretty typical from there out as far as what happens at prom: the dinner and the dancing and the photos.. One of his incredible legacies will be how he modeled being a family man. President Obama may have had a tough couple of weeks, but newly-released images will remind him of his more carefree days. Obamas presidential prospects have been fueled in large part by an arresting life story: The son of a Kenyan goatherder, he wrestled with his dual identities to become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review and a member of the U.S. Senate. "They were like brothers," says Allman. He'd pick them up if they fell down,'' Darmawan recalled. "It just wasn't a race thing," he reiterated again and again. Mr. Orme was unable to travel to Hawaii for the recent holiday, but the others called him twice. He was always very focused.. In the book, Obama discusses race and racism at his high school with one other Punahou student, "Ray,'' the young black man described in detail in "Dreams" as perpetually angry at the white world around him. As he listened, McLachlin never dreamed that one day this determined young man, who had spent most of that season warming the bench while the Punahou High School varsity basketball team was marching on to win the Hawaii state championship, would grow up to be Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. And on Tuesday, in what's become a yearly tradition, the men and their families gathered for a luau hosted by Titcomb. But, said Mr. Ramos, who is in the process of a divorce, We probably spent more time talking about my situation than we did about his., Visits With School Pals Are a Touchstone on Presidents Trips to Hawaii, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/us/politics/visits-with-school-pals-are-a-touchstone-on-presidents-trips-to-hawaii.html, opposite sides of the debate over crime and policing, prohibiting the use of the gender-neutral term in government documents, an array of forces has bolstered this groups presence in Congress and state legislatures. Barack Obama, #23, during his senior year at Punahou School, Honolulu. Darin Maurer and then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. News. Yet those who knew him disputed that during recent interviews. So far, it has been a narrative spun almost entirely on Obamas terms and in his own words -- most prominently in his bestselling memoir, Dreams From My Father.. Daily Mail Reporter, Images show Obama ahead of his prom night in Honolulu in 1979, The Obamas to return to Martha's Vineyard? Among U.S. presidents, Obama is not alone in carving out time regularly to reconnect with his roots. Obama's motorcade left his Kailua vacation rental home at 10:48 a.m. under partly cloudy skies. Some of that crew has stayed in Hawaii, but others have moved off island. The race to track them down and coax them to open up likely will include reporters as well as opposition research experts for political rivals. "Luckily he could swim. In its reissue after he gave the keynote address at the Democratic convention in 2004, "Dreams from My Father" joined a long tradition of political memoirs that candidates have used to introduce themselves to the American people. Elite Dutch colonists once lived there; the Japanese moved in during their occupation of Indonesia in World War II. A member of the varsity squad, though not a starter, Obama and his teammates brought Punahou the state championship in 1979, his senior year. And when tempers flared, Barry was the peacemaker. In his poem, An Old Man, there are glimpses of a tortured adolescent as well as a budding orator. Obama and his family have been in his native Hawaii since December 20 for the Christmas holiday. I wish I would have known that those things were bothering him, or if they did bother him, said Eric Kusunoki, Obamas homeroom teacher from grades nine through 12. (Courtesy Maya Soetoro-Ng ), The life stories, when the presidential candidate tells them, have a common theme: the quest to belong. "It is a shame we have to worry so much about [grade point], but you know what the college entrance competition is these days," she wrote. The attention on Obamas time at Punahou -- a country club campus with nine tennis courts, an Olympic-size pool and an endowment of $180 million -- represents the next important challenge for a celebrity politician who leapt onto the national stage with a few swift strides. The Obamas did skip Hawaii in 2007 and instead the friends joined Mr. Obama in wintry Iowa for the January 2008 presidential caucuses. Obama spent the weekend in California after meeting Friday at a resort with Jordan's king. Hes kind of in and out. As is usual when on the island, the president has been far from political advisers and hangers-on, and has instead spent time with the high school friends who have come to be known collectively, if inaccurately, as the Choom Gang. But generally, said the presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, It does seem like these presidents need to find a sanctuary whether its a place or a group of people where they can just be themselves and feel the connection from the present to the past. High school friends who predate adulthood and professional attainments often know each others siblings, parents, even grandparents and know each other in a way that later friends often cannot. They agreed to rendezvous in Hawaii every year for the holidays, and their reunions became regular even as Mr. Obama was busy climbing to senator and president, a path none of them imagined nearly four decades ago and 5,000 miles from Washington. While Obama rocketed to political prominence, his friend headed down the troubled road Obama had feared he was following. I remember when we were seniors in high school, somebody said Barry would be on the Supreme Court, he said. Barack in the Student Life section of Punahou Schools yearbook. But twice that year the group gathered in Hawaii in August before the Democratic National Convention and in December after Mr. Obamas election. As a result, the handful of black students at Punahou informally banded together. "He'd go right up to the coach during a game and say, `Coach, we're killing this team. He describes making friends easily, becoming fluent in Indonesian in just six months and melding quite easily into the very foreign fabric of Jakarta. If someone is brown, they can be Samoan or Fijian or Tongan. "But it wasn't a race thing," he said. The three men Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb and Greg. Obama has claimed on numerous occasions to have become fluent in Indonesian in six months. In 2006, Mr. Obama used the family Christmas holiday there to decide whether to run for president. Greg? "I went to those parties up at Schofield but never saw him at any of them." Obama wasn't shy about advocating for himself and his fellow backup players, Lum said. This is the Barry I remember.. I cant tell if someone is Fijian or black.. Millions of American teenagers will go to proms this year. Obama confirmed in an interview earlier this month that the Ray character in "Dreams" actually is Kakugawa. Left: Kelli Allmans OAHUAN 1979 Yearbook. The Hawaii holidays became more and more appealing, he said in an interview just after he began his run for president. But one word Obama learned quickly in his new home was curang, which means "cheater." The three men - Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb and Greg. I brood, Mr. Obamas friend Mr. Ramos said a few years ago. From left: Greg Orme, Kelli Allman, Barack Obama and Megan Hughes at Allmans parents house in Honolulu. With rain drizzling over Oahu, Obama's motorcade whisked Obama across the island to Titcomb's beachside home in Waialua, about an hour outside of Honolulu on the North Shore. But after practice theyd hit the public courts. We have had presidents who have not modeled that super well., We had a long basketball career together, Orme recalled in a telephone interview from his home in Eugene, Oregon. He was a good player inside and out, Orme recalled. In Hawaii, our diversity defines us, it doesnt divide us, said Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a close friend of Obamas father in graduate school in the early 60s. He has ethnic Chinese mother and his father was Polish. More than 40 interviews with former classmates, teachers, friends and neighbors in his childhood homes of Hawaii and Indonesia, as well as a review of public records, show the arc of Obama's personal journey took him to places and situations far removed from the experience of most Americans. But Orme is a hard man to find. Bendix said he and Obama learned most of their basketball moves on the playground. He and I really clicked. He would carry his books in one hand and his ball in the other," he said. But he wanted to make everybody happy." Journalistic excavations of a presidential candidates past often turn ugly. One of those kids was Orme, a smart, respectful teenager from a white, middle-class family. They sought out parties, especially at the military bases on the island, where African-Americans would be in attendance. But he seemed to have coped pretty well.. Far less is known about Obama's buddies, of course, than about the president himself. Kakugawa explained that he had meant they were playing in the world of the elite people who populated and ran Punahou--famous Hawaiian families like the Doles, owners of the pineapple fortune, or the original developers of Waikiki, the tourist mecca. You really deserve better than clowns like us; you even laugh at my jokes!. She also shared a complimentary note that Obama had written in her high school yearbook. By Thats what we did to fit in, he said. In snapshots, the boy is a portrait of childhood bliss. So just get the f--- outta my face." Thats when we see each other. "It's their world, all right," Ray supposedly shouts at Obama. Associated Press . Those of us who were black did feel isolated--there's no question about that." 'The sexual warmth is definitely there,' Cook wrote in her journal. Hawaii had become a state only two years before Obama's birth, and there were plenty of native Hawaiians still deeply unhappy about it. "Like being black was a funny costume in and of itself," recalled Smith, now a doctor who specializes in geriatrics in California. Alan Lum, who later would coach the basketball team at Punahou as well as teach elementary school there, recalled Obama as always being the first to confront coaches when he felt they were not fairly allotting playing time. "One of us said that being the different guys in the room had awakened a little bit of empathy to what he must feel all the time at school. A boy wants to find his place in a family where he is visibly different: chubby where others are thin, dark where others are light. "And we were told he had already moved away." His spelling wasnt too good either, he said, referring to the note Obama wrote in his high school year book. The fourth person in the picture is Obama's date,Megan Hughes. In August, Obama kicked off his 53rd birthday weekend golfing with the three friends in suburban Maryland before heading to Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains. 'But the rest of it has sharp edges, 'Tho he speaks sweet words and can be open and trusting, there is also that coolness - and I begin to have an inkling of some things about him that could get to me.'. We get together for golf, he said. He said that of the three, only Mr. Orme, another Punahou hoops player, was in the gang that Mr. Obama described. In fact, it is surprising, based on interviews with more than two dozen people who knew Obama during his nearly four years in Indonesia, that it would take a photograph in a magazine to make him conscious of the fact that some people might treat him differently in part because of the color of his skin. I loved his game," he said. Instead, the chemicals had peeled off much of his skin, leaving him sad and scarred, Obama recalled. If only I had saved that Nerf hoop we used to dunk on. The sailboat the Manu Kai (bird of the sea, in English) is about to set sail behind him. Bobby Titcomb Photos Photos - US President Barack Obama repares to putt on the 18th green as friend Greg Orme retrieves his ball and Darell Harrington (2nd R) and Bobby Titcomb (R) look on at the . As it made its way over the mountain pass, he took in views of the lush, green and misty Koolau mountains. Through the haze of the 70s, they recall only the rat baller who was always up for a game. He said he does recall long, soulful talks with the young Obama and that his friend confided his longing and loneliness. So far, this process has not yielded anything especially damaging to Obamas candidacy. The President of the United States is no different. Third-grade teacher Fermina Katarina Sinaga, now 67, has perhaps the most telling story. remembered Ati Kisjanto, 45. And once you started playing well, contributing on the court, pretty much the racial aspect goes away.. 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Whatever misgivings Obama had about Punahou, attending the school was largely his decision. Barry spent his days at the Punahou School in Hawaii studying, shooting hoops and goofing off with his friends. Zulfan Adi was one of the neighborhood kids who teased Obama most mercilessly. The first family has attended Titcomb's annual luaus in the past. Because of his biracial heritage, he said, he was "like everyone in Hawaii, a mix of a lot of things." They're not his wife and daughters, who came with him, but a trio of pals whose friendship dates back to Obama's high school days in Hawaii. Likewise for Mr. Obama, it seems. He would bring up worldly topics far beyond his years. The real Ray, Keith Kakugawa, is half black and half Japanese. "You need to find Greg Orme," instructed Obama's old basketball coach, Chris McLachin. Furushima paused, then sighed, pointing out how the potential president was prone to drawing a little Afro atop the B and the O on his signature. Orme would stay for the games. Obama, he said, was especially adept at knowing how to build relationships. He said it puzzles him that, as president, Obama was often accused of failing to reach out to political opponents. When kids teased him, Obama yelled back, "Curang, curang!" Yet no such Life issue exists, according to historians at the magazine. Just as he was the only African-American on the basketball team, he was also the only jock working on the schools literary magazine, Ka Wai Ola. He also thanked the "Choom Gang," a reference to "chooming," Hawaiian slang for smoking marijuana. Hes been so gracious to him.. The number at Dunhams apartment in a nondescript Honolulu high rise has not changed in more than a quarter-century. One day while visiting his mother, who was working at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Obama passed time by looking through several issues of Life magazine. The Latest: Obamas, friends tour Hawaii Islamic arts center For much of their childhoods, Orme and Obama were more like brothers than buddies, constant companions both on and off the basketball court who even double-dated on senior prom night. He rode a bright blue tricycle with red, white and blue streamers dangling from the handlebars. Every time out hed come over and chat with me about my stroke, my health, he said. Maurer, who mostly played guard, said he and Obama were no slouches but they were on teams with some really strong jocks. Aging photos show Obama and Orme decked out in 1970s fashion with their dates before attending a high school prom. "He would protect the smaller ones." With his friends, he would drive the Choomwagon, a Volkswagen microbus, to Mount Tantalus, biographer David Maraniss wrote. Yet many say they have trouble reconciling their nearly 30-year-old memories with Obamas more recent descriptions of himself as a brooding and sometimes angry adolescent, grappling with his mixed race and the void left by a father who gave him his black skin but little else. We had to prove ourselves, focus on playing good ball. He would have started on any other high school team on the state," McLachlin said of Obama. But the foursome rarely goes more than a few months without reconvening in one arrangement or another. He added: "I can't say that I've avoided all, or any, of these hazards successfully." The White House said Obama's foursome included childhood friends Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme and Michael Ramos. While Obama got saddled with the nickname Barry OBomber, Maurer said he also "got teased a lot for taking hard to make shots.". HONOLULU (AP) The Latest on President Barack Obama's annual two-week vacation in Hawaii (all times local): 4 p.m. We didnt aim high enough., Every time I see him on television its surreal, said Topolinski. "But it was only playing." 'You are extremely sweet and foxy, I don't know why Greg would want to spend any time with me at all!' Topolinski, who now lives in Washington state, said he lost touch with Obama after high school and they moved into different political camps. Outside of their regular vacation activities, the First Couple (along with Vice President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden) released their holiday playlists. When asked about the discrepancy, Obama said in a recent interview, "It might have been an Ebony or it might have been who knows what it was?"