A father's charm, absence

Friends recall Barack Obama Sr. as a self-confident, complex dreamer whose promising life ended in tragedy

A young Barack Obama is seen with his father,Barack Obama Sr. (Courtesy Barack Obama for America)

On a hot July weekend nearly 40 years ago, Barack Obama Sr. was shopping on a busy Nairobi street when he ran into his friend and mentor Tom Mboya, one of Kenya's most charismatic political leaders. The two chatted for several minutes and Obama kidded him that his car was illegally parked.

"I told him, 'You are parked on a yellow line. You will get a ticket," Obama, the late father of the US presidential candidate, would later testify, according to press accounts at the time. And then the two men parted.

Minutes later, Mboya was shot twice and died in a pool of blood. It was a crime that convulsed the newly independent nation and would, in Obama's eyes, trigger a steep decline in his own promising career. Then 33, and a freshly minted government economist, he testified in the ensuing trial, an act which probably enraged those responsible for Mboya's assassination.

Obama, according to one friend, was convinced he had been targeted for murder after his testimony.

"He said he had been hit by a car not long ago and left for dead," said Pake Zane, 66, who attended the University of Hawaii with Obama and had not publicly discussed their 1974 conversation until now. "He did not say specifically who had done it, but he said it was the same people who killed Mboya."

In the heat of today's presidential campaign, the elder Obama is generally cast as the archetypal absent dad, a brilliant careerist ultimately consumed by women and alcohol, a man who shared little with his namesake son but a driving intellect and ambition.

That image of "The Old Man," as some of his eight children called him, is true, as far as it goes. He was indeed equal parts charm and arrogance. But what is left out is that the patriarch's downfall may have been rooted as much in an act of personal courage - the decision to testify - as it was in his personal weaknesses.

His father's trial testimony is never discussed in Barack Jr.'s book, "Dreams From My Father," and the Democrat's campaign declined to say whether the candidate is aware of it. The book treats Barack Sr. as an elusive and ultimately flawed figure.

Never one to hold back his opinion, Obama Sr. was well known at the time of Mboya's death as a voluble critic of then president Jomo Kenyatta. Already out of favor, in the years immediately after Mboya's death he was removed from the government job that he so loved, and stripped of his passport. Once one of Kenya's most promising young professionals, he did not handle political exile well. He was involved in a series of car crashes, many of them involving alcohol, and one of which ultimately took his life.

Obama's decline was rapid. But what, to many, makes his a tragic tale is the height from which he fell, and the veil of mystery that still clouds his unraveling. Although an avid talker, he was a man of many secrets. In the early years of his life he bristled with promise. Like his son, he linked his future to that of his country.

Barack Obama, was going to "shape the destiny of Africa," he often declared, jabbing his ubiquitous pipe in the air for emphasis. And many thought he might be right. In those years, Obama made anything seem possible, so infectious was his enthusiasm. If Barack Obama, once a village goat herder, could go to Harvard University for a graduate degree, mind you, and then go on to help shape the economy of a nation, anything was possible.

"He was a self-involved, egotistical, vivid person," recalled US Representative Neil Abercrombie, Democrat of Hawaii, who attended the University of Hawaii with Obama Sr. "But in his core he was dedicated to Africa, to freedom and justice. It seemed like it was about him, but in the end it was not. It was really all about hope."

What first struck people about Barack Obama Sr., was The Voice. It rose from his depths. And rumbled. And seized you by the collar.

"It was a deep resonant bass with a timbre you could not forget," recalled Richard Hook, who worked with Obama in the late 1970s as a development adviser for Harvard University's Institute for International Development in Kenya. "He would walk into a room and say, 'My name is Barack Obama, and I am in the Ministry of Finance.' And everyone in the room would instantly look up. Everyone wanted to know who he was."

He was a complex man as deeply rooted in the red earth of his native village of Alego as he was the stylish restaurants of Nairobi. An elegant dresser, he was distinguished by his trademark black glasses and necktie, and an occasional ascot. His extraordinary voice, which bore a trace of the old colonial British accent, was muscled with self-confidence. He sometimes introduced himself as Dr. Obama, although he apparently did not earn a doctorate.

The son of a cook and respected village elder, Obama's personal life was a web of tangled relationships. He had three wives, and many girlfriends. At the time of his death at age 46 in 1982 - he was one year younger than Obama Jr. is now - he was an enigma to many of his eight children.

In Obama Jr.'s memoir, his older sister Auma Obama, acknowledges, "His life was so scattered. People only knew scraps and pieces, even his own children." Barack Obama Jr. saw his father only one time during a prolonged visit to Hawaii in 1971. His memoir is the story of a young man's painful search for his father, one that culminates with Obama weeping next to his father's grave in Africa. Obama's campaign declined to answer questions from the Globe, saying that his book speaks for itself.

There is much that the book does not say. What it does tell is of Obama Sr.'s promising early years, when he was a rebellious boy with a sharp eye for the girls. His mischievous behavior got him expelled from secondary school, but his quick mind earned him recognition early on. In 1959 he was one of 81 promising young Kenyans selected to travel on the first of three student "airlifts" to the United States to attend universities there.

Obama, who was interested in economics, wrote to dozens of universities and was awarded a scholarship to the University of Hawaii. The architect of the airlift was Tom Mboya, one of the principals of Kenya's independence movement, who was grooming the young Kenyans to take prominent positions in the soon-to-be-independent Kenya. Mboya, viewed as a probable successor to Kenyatta, took a keen interest in Obama, who was, like him, a member of the Luo tribe.

Obama was 23 when he boarded a Britannia aircraft, bound for the United States. He was already married to a woman named Kezia with whom he had one child, and another child was on the way. But the airlift, which held the promise of an American degree and a host of invaluable connections, was his shot at a different kind of life.

"My father was very impressed by Obama's intellect and what he had achieved," said Susan Mboya, Mboya's daughter, a general manager at Coca Cola. As the University of Hawaii's first African student, Obama could not have stood out more. Although Hawaii in the early 1960s offered a somewhat diverse cultural mix, there were notably few African-Americans on Honolulu's streets, much less Africans.

"He was the first real black man I ever met," said Zane, who is a vendor in an antiques cooperative in Honolulu.

Many people were interested in this high-spirited, opinionated emissary from Africa, and Obama hardly shied from the spotlight. He addressed churches and community groups on race and politics. He chided the local newspaper for its position on the Congo, suggesting in a letter to its editorial writers that, "maybe you needed more first hand information."

Obama, recalled Abercrombie, "Was a curiosity. He always had an opinion. Anyone can have an opinion, but Barack was brilliant and he always had the information to back it up."

But his style took some getting used to. "He did not lack for self importance," added Abercrombie. "And he could not contain his irritation with people who did not work as hard as he did or were not as facile as he was. But we forgave him that because he was so genuine. People always liked him. They just thought, well, that's Barack."

Obama, who emphasized the first syllable of his first name, unlike his son who emphasizes the second, lived for a while at the YMCA. In a 1959 interview with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Obama, described the absence of racial prejudice in Hawaii as "unique." No one, he marveled, "seems to be conscious of color."

But what he really wanted to talk about was Africa. Obama, who was studying business administration, talked constantly about his fears that warring tribal factions would compromise the new nation. One of a small group of students who often shared beer and pizza, Obama loved to listen to recordings of the Delta bluesmen and sometimes leapt on to the dance floor. But soon enough, he was back on his favorite topic, waving his cigarette.

In time, Obama began to bring to the student gatherings a young woman whom he had met in a Russian language class. Her name was Ann Dunham and she was white. Only 17, Dunham listened intently, but she did not say much. Nor did Obama attempt to draw her out. "Obama was much more in love with his intellect than a woman," said Abercrombie. "Any female in his life, she was in his life, he was not particularly in hers."

Obama never told his friends that he had a wife and two children back in Africa. He told Dunham only that he was separated from his first wife. In 1961, the couple went to Maui and were married. Several months later, Dunham gave birth to a baby boy. His name was Barack Obama Jr., and his father was thrilled.

"After all, there was another Obama in the world. Perhaps he would take after him," Abercrombie recalled. Obama graduated with honors in 1962. Earlier that year he was offered a scholarship to pursue a doctorate at Harvard, which provided enough money for Obama but not for his wife and son, according to the candidates' memoir. Obama decided to go anyway.

In a May 1962 letter to Mboya, Obama waxed excitedly about his plans for Harvard. He made no mention of his second wife and new son, but Mboya, who had recently been appointed Kenya's minister of labor, was aware that Obama had a child in Hawaii, and was not happy about Obama's plans to leave his son behind, according to Susan Mboya. In one of a series of letters the two men exchanged, Mboya chastised his protégé, Susan Mboya said. She declined to release the letters. But Tom Mboya eventually relented, according to his daughter, "for he saw that the opportunity for Obama was very great."

Obama arrived in Cambridge on a brisk fall day in 1962 and swiftly established himself. Then 29, Obama rented an apartment in a rooming house in the shadow of Central Square, which soon became known as a hangout for African students. And when newcomers from Kenya arrived in town, "they knew they could go there and spend a night on the floor and get some information," recalled Paul Nyangani, 66, an uncle of Tom Mboya's and friend of Obama's. There is little record of Obama at Harvard. He received a master's degree in economics in 1965, and did not complete a PhD. But several of his colleagues remember him well.

Frederick Okatcha, a professor of psychology at Kenyatta University who attended Yale University in the mid 1960s, recalls that a group of Africans attending universities on the East Coast would gather in New York, often at the former West End Bar near Columbia University. "Most Kenyans then would talk about the political positions they wanted to hold when they got back," said Okatcha. "Obama was more intellectual."

Although Obama had always enjoyed his beer, he was developing a taste for Johnnie Walker Black that earned him the nickname 'Mr. Double Double.' After Obama ordered his customary double Scotch, "He would shout in that big deep voice, 'Waiter, another double!' said Leo Odera Omolo, a journalist and drinking buddy of Obama's, who lives in Kisumu, a port city in Kenya.

During his time at Harvard, Obama met another woman. Her name was Ruth Nidesand, a teacher and a person of some means. Obama confided in friends that he was attracted to Nidesand in part because, "she was able to pay for some of the social activities that he could not afford," said Omolo. Obama had continued to write Dunham in Hawaii and inquire about their son, but relations between the two deteriorated and they divorced in 1964. The following year, Obama returned to Africa with Nidesand and the couple were soon married.

While Obama may have been open to living with multiple spouses, his new wife was not. Obama's first wife, Kezia Obama, had long waited for her husband's return, according to several of his friends. But Nidesand refused to share a home with her and Obama's two children from his first marriage. Instead, the children, Auma and Roy, moved in with their father according to Obama's book. Obama continued to visit Kezia however, and in the coming years he fathered four more sons, two with Nidesand, and two with Kezia. The children, one of whom died in a motorcycle accident, are scattered around the world.

On his return from the United States, Obama enjoyed the most prosperous period of his life. Employed by an American oil company, he lived comfortably in Nairobi. When he returned to his village on weekends he routinely took lavish gifts and money. He also took stories and photographs of the son he had left in Hawaii, whom he referred to as "Barry."

"He would show us Barry's certificate from school, his report card, things like that," Sayid Obama, Obama Sr.'s brother, said in a telephone interview from Kogelo, a village in western Kenya. "Once he showed us pictures of him playing basketball in college."

With his attractive American wife and prestigious Harvard degree, Obama was man to be reckoned with. He landed a job as an economist in the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, headed by his old friend Mboya. At long last, he was doing the work about which he had dreamed.

"He was a very respected and valued man in the government of Kenya," recalled Hook, 80, the development adviser. "One of the things that set him apart was that he had studied at Harvard which not many others could claim . . . He didn't push it. But it was there." And when the city's movers and shakers gathered at Sans Chique, a chic Nairobi restaurant, Obama pulled up a stool and ordered his customary four shots. If some found him a bit overbearing, so be it.

"I thoroughly enjoyed him," said Philip Ochieng, a Kenyan journalist who was a member of the airlift along with Obama. "He had big dreams. Big unrealistic dreams. He was very undisciplined, unlike his son."

But Obama's sharp tongue soon got the better of him. In 1965, Obama published an article in the East Africa Journal in which he criticized the government's approach to economic planning. At the same time tribal rivalries that had been muted in the interests of independence, were beginning to assert themselves, pitting Kenyatta's Kikuyu loyalists against the Luo tribe of which Mboya and Obama were part. And Obama, had something pointed to say about that, too - that unqualified men were taking the best jobs.

"His friends tried to warn him," Auma Obama said in her brother's book, "but he didn't care. He always thought he knew what was best, you see."

Obama's star began to fall; he was sidelined to a job in the Ministry of Tourism. Frustrated that his skills were not being used, he began to drink more heavily and had a series of alcohol-related car accidents, one of which resulted in the death of another driver.

"He was a terrible driver," said Ochieng. "He would get very excited and zoom like Mr. Toad."

As the Kenyatta regime became the subject of increasing controversy, Obama found many of his colleagues distancing themselves from him. He, in turn, took his anger out on his wife, according to several of his friends, and his marriage began to deteriorate.

"Kenya changed a great deal between 1963 and 1970," said David William Cohen, former director of the International Institute at the University of Michigan and a professor of African history. "Anyone brought into the government with idealism in those early years either exploited the situation, or was completely frustrated. Obama did just what other frustrated intellectuals did at the time, which was to stay in the bars until their minds go to rot."

And then, on the morning of July 5, 1969, things got infinitely worse. Tom Mboya's assassination threw the country into political chaos. And for Obama, it was a personal disaster. Not only had he lost his friend and mentor, but because he happened to have been at the scene he was called upon to testify.

Weeks after Mboya died, a mechanic named Isaac Njenga Njoroge was charged with the slaying and hung. But Njoroge, a Kikuyu, was widely believed to have been a front man for Mboya's political enemies and the assassination remains shrouded in mystery to this day.

"His testimony was the nail in the coffin," said Caroline Elkins, an associate professor of African Studies at Harvard University. "He probably made the right calculation. His mentor was gone. His career was probably over. So, why not do the right thing and testify? He had no one to protect him either way. So it was a very bold move."

A move that apparently cost him. During a visit from his old school friend, Zane, in 1974, Obama confided that he had seen Mboya's killer and claimed to be the only witness who could identify him. According to an biography of Mboya, "Tom Mboya: The Man Kenya Wanted to Forget," nine eyewitnesses to the shooting failed to identify Njoroge in a police lineup.

Obama is not mentioned in the book. If Obama identified the killer, or tried to, press accounts of the trial are silent about it. Shortly afterward, he told Omolo that he was being followed by a team of government security agents, angry about his testimony. And years later, he told Zane that he and his family had been threatened with death if he identified the shooter.

Zane was astonished at the transformation in his once vibrant friend, who had been divorced by his third wife a year before. "He was a broken spirit," said Zane.

Whether Obama's claim was a self-aggrandizing fantasy, or the eleventh-hour confidence of a man broken by fear, is unclear. Obama apparently told few others. Susan Mboya said she was unaware of Obama's testimony, and that her mother, Pam Mboya, did not wish to discuss her husband's death. Several historians of the period, however, believe that Obama may have held on to his secret for good reason.

"Foes of the powers that be in Kenya are prone to be eliminated," said Cohen.

It was after one of his many car accidents, that Obama visited his 10-year-old son in Hawaii in 1971, the first and only time he saw him since he left nine years earlier. The visit lasted a month, and it was not easy.

Obama Jr. and his parents visited landmarks of their short past together. But one night the elder Obama barked at his son to stop watching "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" and ordered him to get to his homework, according to the book's account.

"Barry, you do not work as hard as you should," admonished his father. "Go, now, before I get angry at you." And so it was that Obama Jr., as he wrote, "began to count the days until my father would leave and things would return to normal."

On his return to Africa, Obama's life returned to a normalcy of it own. In the waning years of the Kenyatta regime, Obama returned to work in the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development. He continued to write sporadic letters to his son in the United States. And in the late 1970s he fathered his eighth child. He continued to drink heavily.

Clive Gray, a fellow at the Harvard Institute for International Development, recalls walking through the ministry in Nairobi one morning and seeing Obama staggering down the corridor. He recognized Obama from his Harvard days, although he had not known him.

"I asked someone next to me, 'What is the matter with that guy?' " said Gray, who lives in Greensboro, Vt. "He said, 'He is always very intoxicated and unable to do his job.' It was very sad."

Abercrombie thinks a bit about his old friend Barack Obama Sr. these days, what with that name in the news all the time. He has never told Senator Barack Obama of the times he spent with his father, or that he knew him as a tiny baby in Hawaii.

But sometimes, when he hears the candidate trumpet his plans for change, he is reminded of the old days when Obama the father was a dreamer, too. What, Abercrombie wonders, would the elder Obama have thought of his son's running for the presidency of the Unites States?

"In a paradoxical way, Barack Obama is carrying out his father's dream," Abercrombie said. "Not that his father wanted him to be president of the United States. But if someone had said to him, 'You know, your son might be the president,' he would have said, 'Well, of course. He's my son.' "