greg orme obama's friendpacific basketball coach

'You really deserve better than clowns like us; you even laugh at my jokes! He had friends there, he was comfortable there, and to a kid his age, that's all that mattered." 14:27 GMT 23 May 2013 We have this tradition to head home to Hawaii for Christmas. We didnt aim high enough., Every time I see him on television its surreal, said Topolinski. He was probably studying them and learning from them. And a young, iconoclastic white woman who had defied the social mores of the day by marrying a dashing black man from Kenya was coping with the fact that her new husband essentially had abandoned her and their young child in 1963 to study at Harvard. Although their paths have long since diverged, they've made it a point to gather for frequent reunions, in one of Obama's most visible links to the days when his life was much simpler and his problems more mundane. While Obama's prom photographs have never been seen before, details have previously emerged about his high school years. Genevieve Cook, an elementary school teacher, and Obama met at a Christmas party in the East Village in 1983. These previously unpublished photos, obtained exclusively by TIME from Obama's schoolmate Kelli Allman (ne McCormack), show a 17-year-old Barack Obama on the night of his senior prom.. Every time out hed come over and chat with me about my stroke, my health, he said. After graduating in 1979, Maurer wound up at Stanford where he made the team as a walk on and found God. They were like brothers, says Allman. Dan Hale, the 6-foot-7-inch star center of the 1979 Punahou basketball team, said Obamas depiction of Hawaii as a place where race really mattered hardly resonates with him. 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. Greg Orme, a fellow varsity basketball player, was Obamas constant companion. He is undergoing what some have called the Profile Primary -- which is testing his ability to keep control of his public image, as journalists sketch portraits of the candidate as a young man and comb for contradictions and potential embarrassments in his past. And having a Hawaiian in the White House made them all proud. We get together for golf, he said. He was tenacious.. Some, like Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, counted later acquaintances among political donors as friends. I hadnt seen him for 30 years.. And he clearly didn't appreciate that," Orme said. I always knew he would do something, of course we never expected hed be in the White House, teammate and lifelong friend Greg Orme said. In one family photo before the mother and son moved to Indonesia, Obama walks barefoot on Waikiki Beach, arms outstretched as though embracing the entire beautiful life around him. Journalistic excavations of a presidential candidates past often turn ugly. IE 11 is not supported. "I don't imagine the decision to let him stay behind was an easy one for anyone," Soetoro-Ng said. Hawaii friends Bobby Titcomb and Greg Orme, Punahou Academy classmates, were also on hand. Known as Ann throughout her adult life, she kept to herself. But we didnt really become good friends until the seventh grade. Electricity had arrived only a couple of years earlier. Speaking up for yourself., I gave them more playing time, McLachlin chuckled. Obama is playing golf with three of his friends, Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb and Greg Orme. When kids teased him, Obama yelled back, "Curang, curang!" Asked Saturday about Kakugawa's recollections, the Obama campaign declined to make the senator available. But the reality of Obama's narrative is not that simple. Still, the story of his early years highlights how politics and autobiography are similar creatures: Each is shaped to serve a purpose. Or Japanese. ", We would be like, Hey lets go to the beach, Bendix recalled. But it has revealed the vagaries of memory, as well as the ambivalent emotions stirred among old acquaintances when someone they once knew becomes famous. FILE - In this Dec. 29, 2014 file photo, President Barack Obama, center, walks during a round of golf with Greg Orme, left, and Mike Ramos, on the 18th hole of the Mid Pacific Country Club in . During her son's earliest years, Obama's mother, whose full name was Stanley Ann Dunham because her father desperately had wished for a boy, attended college at the University of Hawaii. In an interview with the Tribune on Saturday, Kakugawa said he always considered himself mixed race, like so many of his friends in Hawaii, and was not an angry young black man. In a striking snapshot with his grandparents, Stanley smiles proudly while Madelyn hugs him fiercely, as though she doesn't want to let him go forth into a world far from the remote island that for so long had been his home. Teachers, former playmates and friends recall a boy who never fully grasped their language and who was very quiet as a result. She said a woman from People came to visit with her and then walked away with the Punahou reunion list and all its phone numbers. He came across an article that he later would describe as feeling like an "ambush attack." Obama and his family have . The other kids would scrap with him sometimes, but because Obama was bigger and better-fed than many of them, he was hard to defeat. Some of these discrepancies are typical of childhood memories -- fuzzy in specifics, warped by age, shaped by writerly license. When youre on a school team, theres more discipline involved, he said. He didnt have to see me, but he was a man of his word, he said. Barry did a good job but I think we needed a change," he said. I brood, Mr. Obamas friend Mr. Ramos said a few years ago. Titcomb, who golfed another two days with Obama this month before the others got into town, was a year behind Obama at Punahou. He was the only foreign child in the neighborhood. Mr. Obamas concern, Mr. Axelrod said, was for Mr. Titcomb, whose arrest was international news because he happened to be Barack Obamas friend.. He made an appointment to see me one day and he brought along a couple other guys who wanted more playing time, Chris McLachlin recalled. "His friends called him `Negro,' " Darmawan said. HONOLULU -- Until recently, the players on Hawaiis 1979 state basketball championship team thought their glory days were behind them, consigned to yearbooks and faded newspaper clippings. WASHINGTON President Obama has called Hawaii his refuge, and so it has been throughout his political life. Made a strong case for them.. But he seemed to have coped pretty well.. For me its the unconditional love, its the nontransactional nature of the relationship that enduring quality that is something that I really value, he said. KAILUA, HI - DECEMBER 29: (AFP OUT) U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and friend Greg Orme (R) wait to warm up on the driving range to play golf with friends December 29, 2008 in Kailua, Hawaii. I loved his game," he said. The first family has attended Titcomb's annual luaus in the past. On the lower half of the seventh-grade page is the same group, under a heading of Useless Races in America. The joke, it seems, is on intolerance. 00:53 GMT 31 Dec 2014 Zulfan Adi was one of the neighborhood kids who teased Obama most mercilessly. While Obama rocketed to political prominence, his friend headed down the troubled road Obama had feared he was following. remembered Ati Kisjanto, 45. 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. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Hopefully now that hes done well get to see each other more, he said. A high school friend has shared photographs of Obama at his prom night withTIME magazine - as well as a very friendly note he penned in her yearbook, in which he calls her 'sweet and foxy'. Likewise for Mr. Obama, it seems. Obama, who has talked and written so much about struggling to find a sense of belonging due to his mixed race, brushes over this time of his life in "Dreams." The images from 1979 show a grinning 17-year-old Obama in a white suit with his arm around his date, Megan Hughes, before they headed to the party at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii. 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. Get-togethers in the decades after high school were rare as the men built careers and families, although Mr. Ramos, Mr. Titcomb and Mr. Orme attended the Obamas Chicago wedding in 1992. Titcomb has worked as a commercial fisherman and an airline employee, according to the school's alumni magazine. He struggled greatly with the foreign language, she said, and with his studies as a result. The night, Obama later wrote, made him furious as he realized that whites held a "fundamental power" over blacks. "You need to find Greg Orme," instructed Obama's old basketball coach, Chris McLachin. Those are qualities a president should have. 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.. "They held his hands and feet and said, `One, two, three,' and threw him in the swamp," recalled Adi, who still lives in the same house where he grew up. No such photos, no such article. These previously unpublished photos, obtained exclusively by TIME from Obamas schoolmate Kelli Allman (ne McCormack), show a 17-year-old Barack Obama on the night of his senior prom. Hes exhibited class and dignity all the way through it. Once again, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, who had been as much parents as grandparents throughout the young man's life, said he could live with them. The fun may wear off, if history is any guide. Their new neighborhood was only 3 miles to the west, but a world away. Their. Chris McLachlin is seen at his house on Jan. 4 in Honolulu, Hawaii. We were all cracking up, and everyone was smiling, says Allman. "At the time, it was about basketball," said Orme, who has remained friends with Obama over the years and who plays basketball with him almost every Christmas when the two return to Hawaii to visit family. Though Orme spent most afternoons with Obama and considered him one of his closest friends, he said Obama never brought up issues of race, never talked about feeling out of place at Punahou. Whatever misgivings Obama had about Punahou, attending the school was largely his decision. Its good for me, pre-Alzheimers, to try and remember this stuff, he said, struggling to recall something other than Obamas love for basketball and his improbable hook shot. He describes making friends easily, becoming fluent in Indonesian in just six months and melding quite easily into the very foreign fabric of Jakarta. HONOLULU (AP) The Latest on President Barack Obama family vacation in Hawaii (all times local): 10 p.m. President Barack Obama and his family dined with friends Wednesday night to cap off another day of their Hawaii getaway. "He didn't say what country he wanted to be president of. Obamas prom pictures released. We all come from so many backgrounds, we have to get along., Obamas teammates for the most part are careful not to judge an old friend, even if his memories of racial attitudes at Punahou differ from their own. "It's their world, all right," Ray supposedly shouts at Obama. I guarantee he would have won a third term if he could have run again. Obama wrote in the lengthy yearbook note. Maurer, who mostly played guard, said he and Obama were no slouches but they were on teams with some really strong jocks. Millions of American teenagers will go to proms this year. 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If this story is eight paragraphs, seven of them go to Greg. Our coaches were much more conservative, he said. Back in 1979 he was known as Barry and he had a beef with his basketball coach. The White House says Obama is playing golf with some of his longtime friends including Mike Ramos, Greg Orme and Bobby Titcomb. Im incredibly proud of my friend. All four were classmates at Punahou School in Honolulu, which Obama has described as 'a prestigious prep school, an incubator for island elites. Darin Maurer and then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. For the past two weeks, he has been recharging on Oahu after an unpleasant year in the job. He said Obama may have come across as easy going, but he was no pushover. The fourth person in the picture is Obama's date,Megan Hughes. He has ethnic Chinese mother and his father was Polish. 21:01 GMT 31 Dec 2014. 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. . Having their back. We had to prove ourselves, focus on playing good ball. "I went to those parties up at Schofield but never saw him at any of them." "He was built like a bull. By '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.'. Like Mr. Obama, he was of mixed parentage the son of a Filipino father and a Czech mother and his parents were divorced. "Did you know that in Thomas Jefferson's day, and right up through the 1930s, anybody who had the price of tuition could go to Harvard? "I never picked up on that," Hagar said. 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. One of his incredible legacies will be how he modeled being a family man. In 2006, Mr. Obama used the family Christmas holiday there to decide whether to run for president. On this visit alone, Obama has spent more than 22 hours with the group on the lush golf courses that dot the island of Oahu. As it made its way over the mountain pass, he took in views of the lush, green and misty Koolau mountains. His spelling wasnt too good either, he said, referring to the note Obama wrote in his high school year book. The photos and interviews are in the new issue of TIME, which is out on Friday. On page 271 of the 1979 Oahuan, Obama's entry reflects the crossroads he found himself at as he prepared for life beyond Hawaii. The idea that his biggest struggle was race is [bull]." Obama has told the story--one of the watershed moments of his racial awareness--time and again, in remarkable detail. Obama has claimed on numerous occasions to have become fluent in Indonesian in six months. 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 . Pothead. Then there's the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. But such solitude has become less and less attainable for presidents in modern times. (Photo by Joaquin Siopack-Pool/Getty Images) When it rained, Obama and his pals went bowling, instead. "I did say we were playing in their world," he explained, "but that had nothing to do with race. He knew that." 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. Allman said that she thought highly of Obama, who was 'very intelligent and witty'. Only Mr. Titcomb stayed in Hawaii. 'It was a really fun, happy time,' she said. The president turns 53 on Monday. Young Barack Obama in a 7th grade photo in 1974 at Punahou School, Honolulu, Hawaii. The Obamas did skip Hawaii in 2007 and instead the friends joined Mr. Obama in wintry Iowa for the January 2008 presidential caucuses. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Vanity Fair is coming soon. He said that of the three, only Mr. Orme, another Punahou hoops player, was in the gang that Mr. Obama described. They have a different level of affection for you than friends you meet later in life. It can be very racially hostile, especially if youre white or black. 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. "Suddenly we asked, `Where's Barry?' He'd pick them up if they fell down,'' Darmawan recalled. He would bring up worldly topics far beyond his years. The president was returning to the White House on Monday. In December 2006, as Mr. Obama decided on his first presidential campaign, the friends talked about how the race would complicate their next getaway. 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. Kelli Allman is the pretty redhead pictured in the photo. 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. A member of the varsity squad, though not a starter, Obama and his teammates brought Punahou the state championship in 1979, his senior year. He said they adored his slam-dunking style and no-look passing, but their coaches were not fans. "Like being black was a funny costume in and of itself," recalled Smith, now a doctor who specializes in geriatrics in California. "If this story is eight paragraphs, seven of them go to Greg. 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. 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. "He would be very helpful with friends. Oblivious to all of this was a perpetually smiling toddler the entire family called Barry. When a friend gave him shrimp paste instead of chocolate, he yelled, "Curang, curang!" It is the same one that a young Obama wrote in the yearbook of a petite black-haired beauty named Kelli Furushima -- the object of his high school crush. Throughout his youth, as depicted in his first book, he always found ways to meld into even the most uninviting of communities. When his mother, a woman said to have been born with a keen sense of wanderlust, announced she was returning to Indonesia, Obama, then a teenager, asked to stay in Hawaii, according to Soetoro-Ng, 36, who still lives in Honolulu. Obama and his mother joined her new husband, a kind man who later would become a detached heavy drinker and womanizer, family members in Indonesia say. She also sent advice about his future. You can see how he was much more sensitive than the other guys, even back then.. The 1979 photo was snapped inside the home of former classmate, Kelli Allman, who was the prom date of the pr, Fashion alert! His middle school yearbook captures the multiracial mood that many Hawaiians say has always defined the Aloha spirit. In front of a chalkboard with Mixed Races of America written in a students hand, Obama waved the peace sign for the camera. His love for Michelle and Sasha and Malia is outstanding. As you know, he made getting better health care for Americans one of his missions.. Hed tell us to move on if we got into it with another player. The three men - Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb and Greg Orme - are among the few people still in Obama's life who knew him long before he was famous. Hes been so gracious to him.. Third-grade teacher Fermina Katarina Sinaga, now 67, has perhaps the most telling story. Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy. He was always very focused.. This is my man! a delighted Obama said, Maurer recalled. 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. For Orme, the Obama he saw on the court was a lot like the Obama who occupied the White House a team player who liked to win. Hes not like that.. So far, the candidacy of the man known by his high school friends as Barry Obama has been good for the Hawaii economy and bad for newsroom budgets. "Not even close," he said, adding that Obama was dealing with "some inner turmoil" in those days. But absent from those discussions, they say, was another student then known as Barry Obama. The handful of black students who attended Punahou School in Hawaii, for instance, say they struggled mightily with issues of race and racism there. He and I really clicked. Franklin D. Roosevelt made frequent trips back to Hyde Park, N.Y., throwing picnics or barbecues for former neighbors and friends, and George H.W. 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. Obama is spending the weekend golfing with Punahou School friends Greg Orme, Bobby Titcomb and Mike Ramos ahead of a summit of Southeast Asian leaders at the Sunnylands estate in Rancho. Or Hawaiian. With his friends, he would drive the Choomwagon, a Volkswagen microbus, to Mount Tantalus, biographer David Maraniss wrote. Now lots of people are interested in helping graduates of Punahou School jog their foggy memories, trolling for revelations about a young man who spent much of his time that season riding the bench. But he wanted to make everybody happy." Barry was a very confident player who liked to drive to the basket. 'We had great vibes between us.'. Thats what we did to fit in, he said. He also thanked the "Choom Gang," a reference to "chooming," Hawaiian slang for smoking marijuana. They marked the 10th year of their rendezvous by looking through old photos, Mr. Ramos said, of when the kids were young and the dads had dark hair. And of course, he said, they all the president included reflected on the past year. I dont want to accuse her of stealing it, but it was on the table when she arrived and it wasnt when she left, said Furushima. Obama played basketball at Punahou with Orme, who the alumni magazine says is now a building contractor. Murdaugh is heckled as he leaves court, Missing hiker buried under snow forces arm out to wave to helicopter, Incredible footage of Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russians in Bakhmut, Fleet-footed cop chases an offender riding a scooter, Two Russian tanks annihilated with bombs by Ukrainian armed forces, Isabel Oakeshott clashes with Nick Robinson over Hancock texts, Dozens stuck in car park as staff refuses to open gate for woman, Insane moment river of rocks falls onto Malibu Canyon in CA. On Sunday evening, Titcomb hosted a barbecue at his beachfront home for the entire contingent from . Increasingly, the reunions have become the focal point of Obama's family vacation in his second term as his teenage daughters spend less and less time at their father's side. "But it wasn't a race thing," he said. "He's not like that." Mr. Ramos was a year ahead of Mr. Obama's Punahou class of '79, but played with him on the basketball.

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