Lolo Soetoro - Marriage To Ann Dunham

Marriage To Ann Dunham

After living in Seattle, Washington, with her infant son Barack from September 1961 to June 1962 while taking classes at the University of Washington, Ann Dunham returned to Honolulu and resumed her undergraduate education at the University of Hawaii in January 1963. In January 1964 she filed for divorce from her estranged husband, Barack Obama Sr., who had left Hawaii in June 1962 to pursue graduate study at Harvard University.

Soetoro and Dunham met at the East-West Center while both were students at the University of Hawaii. Soetoro and Dunham married in Hawaii in 1965. Soetoro, a geographer, returned to Indonesia in 1966, to help map Western New Guinea for the Indonesian government, while Dunham and her son moved into her parents' house in Honolulu to complete her studies at the University of Hawaii; she earned a B.A. in anthropology in 1967. Her son attended kindergarten from 1966 to 1967 at Noelani Elementary School in Honolulu.

In 1967, Dunham and her six-year-old son moved to Jakarta to rejoin Soetoro. The reunited family initially lived in a new modest stucco and red tile house at 16 Kyai Haji Ramli Tengah Street in a newly-built neighborhood in the Menteng Dalam administrative village of the Tebet subdistrict in South Jakarta for two and a half years, and owned a new Japanese motorcycle. From January 1968 to December 1969, Dunham taught English and was an assistant director of the Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia Amerika (LIA)–the Indonesia-America Friendship Institute–which was subsidized by U.S. government. Obama attended the Indonesian-language Santo Fransiskus Asisi (St. Francis of Assisi) Catholic School around the corner from their house for 1st, 2nd, and part of 3rd grade.

In 1970, with his financial situation improved by a new job in government relations at Union Oil Company, Soetoro moved his family two miles north to a rented house at 22 Taman Amir Hamzah Street in the Matraman Dalam neighborhood in the Pegangsaan administrative village of the Menteng subdistrict in Central Jakarta, with a car replacing their motorcycle. From January 1970 to August 1972, Dunham taught English and was a department head and a director of the Lembaga Pendidikan dan Pengembangan Manajemen (LPPM)–the Institute of Management Education and Development. Obama attended the Indonesian-language government-run Besuki School one and a half miles east in the exclusive Menteng administrative village of the Menteng subdistrict for part of 3rd grade and for 4th grade.

In mid-1970, between 3rd and 4th grades at the Besuki School, Obama spent the summer in Hawaii with his grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, and interviewed for admission to the Punahou School in Honolulu. On August 15, 1970, Soetoro and Dunham had a daughter, Maya Kassandra Soetoro.

In mid-1971, Obama moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents and attend Punahou School starting in 5th grade. A year later, in August 1972, Dunham, with the help of her employer (LPPM), obtained an Asia Foundation grant to begin graduate study in anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She and her daughter moved back to Hawaii where they rejoined Obama.

Dunham completed her coursework at the University of Hawaii for a M.A. in anthropology in December 1974, and after three years in Hawaii, returned with her daughter to Jakarta in 1975 to complete her contract with LPPM and do anthropological field work. Obama chose to stay with his grandparents in Hawaii to continue attending Punahou School for high school. In 1976, Dunham and her daughter moved to Yogyakarta, living for half a year with Soetoro's 76-year-old mother.

During their years in Indonesia, Dunham became increasingly interested in the country's culture, while Soetoro became more interested in Western culture, and their relationship was in conflict over differing values. Their divorce became final on November 6, 1980.

In his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, Obama described Soetoro as well-mannered, even-tempered, and easy with people; he wrote of the struggles he felt Soetoro had to deal with after his return to Indonesia from Hawaii. He described his stepfather as following "a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths." In a 2007 article, Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Kim Barker reported that Soetoro "was much more of a free spirit than a devout Muslim, according to former friends and neighbors."