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 After the birth of her third child, Scott, Lenore
LaFount Romney was devastated to learn that she could no longer
carry a baby. The risks were too high, she was told, and future
births could only be done through a Caesarean section. This
probably explains the shock that accompanied the news of Willard
Mitt Romney’s arrival on March 12, 1947.
The proud father, George Wilcken Romney, was bursting with joy
and sent out telegrams and letters to family and friends from
their home in Detroit, Michigan. In one of the letters, George
declared, “Well, by now most of you have had the really big
news, but for those who haven't, Willard Mitt Romney arrived at
Ten AM March 12.”
It was a difficult birth, and the attending doctor remarked, as
related by Tiger Vidmar in his book, ‘Behind the Mask: Mitt
Romney’; “I don't see how she became pregnant, or how she
carried the child.”
The parents named him in honor of George’s good friend, J.
Willard Marriot (who would later establish the Marriot chain of
hotels) and his cousin Milton ‘Mitt’ Romney, the former star
quarterback for the Chicago Bears.
 Romney’s arrival coincided with George’s rising
fortune. The college dropout, who by then was already a highly
rated executive after successful stints as General Manager of the
Automobile Manufacturers Association, and later, as Managing
Director of the Automotive Council for War Production, is widely
credited as one of the architects in Detroit’s emergence as the
Motor City of the nation.
He was poached by George Mason a year after Mitt was born and
appointed as the Executive Vice President of Nash-Kelvinator,
which effectively made him the number two man in the firm. Five
years later, following the death of Mason, George became the
President and Chairman of the firm. Within twelve months, George
engineered a merger between Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson Motor Car
Company, forming the American Motors Corporation (AMC).
Things were looking bleak at the time for the company. Two other
smaller car manufacturers, Packard and Studebaker, folded the
previous year in the face of the onslaught from the big three;
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. AMC was not expected to fare
much better. But George rose to the challenge and introduced the
first national branding campaign in the motor industry for the
Rambler, aided by a host of Disney characters following the
inking of a sponsorship agreement between AMC and Disneyland.
Two straight years of record breaking sales followed, and the
Rambler became the third highest selling car in the United States
by the early 60s. With the survival of AMC secured, George left
the firm in late 1961 for a well-deserved rest, and to begin a
new chapter in his career - politics.
 George ran for Governor of Michigan in 1962, and
against all odds, triumphed in what was considered a Democratic
stronghold. He was reelected twice more after that, in 1964 and
1966. He was widely tipped to contest the 1968 Republican
presidential nomination race. However, he withdrew after
realizing that Richard Nixon was a shoe-in for the nomination.
Nevertheless, President Nixon, fearing a renewed run from George
in 1972, attempted to appease the man by appointing him to his
12-man cabinet, as the Secretary of Housing and Urban
Development. George accepted the offer, and it proved to be his
last high profile position.
During the time George was latched securely on a supersonic
career path, young Mitt grew under the tremendous shadow of his
larger than life father. However, instead of wilting under the
glare of the father he idolized, Mitt, protected by an adoring
mother and the rest of his siblings, and took every available
opportunity to spend some time with his old man. The affection
was mutual, as re-counted by Dick Milliman, the former Press
Secretary for Romney Sr. “They would hug upon meeting, and
not just any hug," he recalls. "He would give Mitt a big
bear hug and a kiss.”
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Barack Obama Sr. was awarded a joint scholarship by Kenya-based
Airlift Africa project and the African-American Students
Foundation, which led to him enrolling in the University of
Hawaii in Honolulu in the fall of 1959 to pursue a degree in
Economics. Free-spirited, Wichita-born Stanley Ann Dunham
enrolled there at about the same time, pursuing a Mathematics
degree.
As luck would have it, both the 23-year old Obama Sr. and the
17-year Dunham signed up for the same basic Russian language
class for some extra credits. The pair met, and romance
blossomed. A few months later, Dunham moved into Obama Sr.’s
rented unit at 625 11th Ave Honolulu, and President Barack Obama
was conceived here sometime in early December 1960.
625 11th Ave Honolulu
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Dunham, already a scandalous figure in the community for her
relationship with Obama Sr., dropped out of the university after
learning of her pregnancy. The couple was married a little over a
month later on Groundhog Day, February 2, 1961, in the small
coastal town of Wailuku in Maui. Barack Hussein Obama II was born
half a year later on August 4, 1961. But the marriage was a
short- lived affair. Their home life was jolted not long after
marriage, when Dunham discovered that Obama Sr. hid about an
earlier marriage, and an existing wife, in his homeland Kenya.
Their relationship broke down irretrievably.
A heartbroken Dunham, with the one-month old Obama Jr. in tow,
moved to Seattle and attended a program at the University of
Washington. She stayed in a rented apartment there, juggling baby
Obama with her studies. Meanwhile, back in Hawaii, Obama Sr.
graduated and was quickly offered another scholarship, this time
by Harvard, to pursue a Ph.D. in Economics. He left in September
1962, and Dunham returned the same month, moving in back with her
parents. Not much is known of their life in the next two years,
beyond the fact that Dunham’s parents, Stanley and Madelyn Lee,
proved to be doting grandparents to the young Obama. With the
support of her parents, Dunham re-enrolled in the University of
Hawaii for a degree in Cultural Anthropology. She filed for
divorce in January 1964, and Obama Sr. did not contest
it.Stanley with Obama During her free time,
Dunham began spending time in the new East-West Center campus, a
Congress-funded initiative designed to forge and build
relationships among the American academic and professional
community with their Asian counterpart. It was here, in the
Center’s 21-acre, six building compound located adjacent to the
University of Hawaii, that Dunham met and subsequently fell in
love with, Lolo Soetoro.
Soetoro, a 29-year old government-sponsored Indonesian student,
was in the third year of his Geography studies. The couple dated,
and was married on March 15, 1965, in a civil ceremony in
Molokai. Dunham and the young Obama, affectionately called Barry
by his family, moved into Soetoro’s rented house at 3326 Oahu
Avenue in Upper Manoa.
Soetoro, after obtaining his degree, returned to Indonesia in
1966. Dunham graduated in 1967 and promptly moved to Indonesia
with six-year old Obama to join her husband. Soetoro’s early
employment remains a source of contention, although the most
popularly accepted one was either as a Surveyor or Colonel with
the Indonesian Army. However, based on several passages from
President Obama’s 1995 bestseller, Dreams of My Father, the
latter seems more likely.
Dreams of My Father, page 25I noticed a series
of indented scars that ran from his ankle halfway up his shin.
“What are those?”
“Leech marks,” he said. “From when I was in New Guinea.
They crawl inside your army boots while you’re hiking through
the swamps. At night, when you take off your socks, they’re
stuck there, fat with blood. You sprinkle salt on them and they
die, but you still have to dig them out with a hot knife.”….
I asked Lolo if it had hurt. “Of course it hurt,” he said,
taking a sip from the jug. “Sometimes you can’t worry about
hurt. Sometimes you worry only about getting where you have to
go.”….
“Have you ever seen a man killed?” I asked him. He
glanced down, surprised by the question. “Have you?” I asked
again.
“Yes,” he said.
“Was it bloody?”
“Yes.”
I thought for a moment. “Why was the man killed? The one you
saw?”
“Because he was weak.”
“That’s all?”
Lolo shrugged and rolled his pant leg back down. “That’s
usually enough. Men take advantage of weakness in other men.
They’re just like countries in that way. The strong man takes
the weak man’s land. He makes the weak man work in his fields.
If the weak man’s woman is pretty, the strong man will take
her.” He paused to take another sip of water, then asked,
“Which would you rather be?”
I didn’t answer, and Lolo squinted up at the sky. “Better to
be strong,” he said finally, rising to his feet. “If you
can’t be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who’s
strong. But always better to be strong yourself.
Always.”Dreams of My Father, page 27
"Still, something had happened between her and Lolo in the
year that they had been apart. In Hawaii he had been so full of
life, so eager with his plans. At night when they were alone, he
would tell her about growing up as a boy during the war, watching
his father and eldest brother leave to join the revolutionary
army, hearing the news that both had been killed and everything
lost, the Dutch army’s setting their house aflame, their flight
into the countryside, his mother’s selling her gold jewelry a
piece at a time in exchange for food. Things would be changing
now that the Dutch had been driven out, Lolo had told her; he
would return and teach at the university, be a part of that
change.
He didn’t talk that way anymore. In fact, it seemed as though
he barely spoke to her at all, only out of necessity or when
spoken to, and even then only of the task at hand, repairing a
leak or planning a trip to visit some distant cousin. It was as
if he had pulled into some dark hidden place, out of reach,
taking with him the brightest part of himself. On some nights,
she would hear him up after everyone else had gone to bed,
wandering through the house with a bottle of imported whiskey,
nursing his secrets. Other nights he would tuck a pistol under
his pillow before falling off to sleep. Whenever she asked him
what was wrong, he would gently rebuff her, saying he was just
tired."Much later in the book, Obama would recount his
experiences living in Indonesia, one that profoundly affected
both him and his mother. He began to understand the naiveté of
his mother, of her habit of only seeing the best in everyone and
of her constant battle for acceptance.
Obama spent his first three years of primary school in SD
Fransiscus Asisi (St. Francis of Asisi), a Catholic school under
the auspices of the St. Francis of Asisi Church in Jakarta. A
statue of young Obama in front of SD Franciscus Asisi in
Jakarta Three years later, with the help of his brother, Soetoro
managed to secure a job with Mobil Oil Co, as an executive in
their government relations office. The family moved to a new
house near Central Jakarta, and Obama continued his education in
the nearby government-run Menteng State Elementary School for the
next year and a half. Dunham also found a new job as the Director
of the Indonesian Institute of Management, Education and
Development.
On August 15, 1970, Dunham gave birth to Maya Kassandra Soetoro,
and life appeared to be perfect for the young family.
However, Dunham began to have reservations about the education of
his son. She feared that, despite the daily three-hour early
morning tutoring she gave Obama, he will lose his identity and
culture growing up in a foreign land. And thus, in 1971, Dunham
decided to send Obama back to Hawaii to live with his
grandparents.
Obama, with his 9th grade class in 1976 A
ten-year old Obama returned to Hawaii in the summer of 1971 into
the eagerly awaiting embrace of his grandparents, Stanley and
Madelyn. They enrolled him into the Punahou School, one of the
top private schools in Hawaii, where he will stay until
graduation eight years later. His schoolmates at the time
included AOL founder Steve Case and Hollywood actress, Kelly
Preston.
He received a surprise several months later when his biological
father, Obama Sr., came to visit. The older Obama took his son to
a jazz concert, featuring the legendary jazz pianist, David
Brubeck. It proved to be the first and only time they would meet.
Obama Sr. would pass away eleven years later in a car
crash.Obama Sr. and Obama Jr. His mother returned to Hawaii the following year with his
half-sister Maya after obtaining a scholarship to pursue an M.A
in Anthropology from the University of Hawaii. She graduated
three years later, and planned on bringing Obama back with her to
Indonesia. However, Obama chose to stay behind with his
grandparents and finish high school at Punahou. Dunham returned
again two years later to complete her Ph.D, and once more, Obama
decided to stay behind when she returned to Indonesia in 1978.
Obama was a respected and well-liked student in his school. He
played as a forward in the school’s basketball team and won the
1979 State Championship. He was in the Choir Club and became one
of the editors at the school magazine. Outside the school, Obama
was an avid surfer, a fan of jazz and loves fishing. His former
homeroom teacher, Eric Kusunoki, remarked in an interview 28
years later, “I knew he would do well. He was very gifted, and
I knew he'd do great things”. Years later, Obama would admit to
experimenting with drugs and consuming alcohol in high school. He
graduated in 1979, and his journey into adulthood officially
began.
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