Barack Obama's Father's Ultimate Decline Preceded by Act of Personal Courage

[bigtree]

September 21, 2008



A father's charm, absence -- Friends recall Barack Obama Sr. as a self-confident, complex dreamer whose promising life ended in tragedy


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.


read more: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/09/21/a_fathers_charm_absence/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed2

[kestrel91316]

1. Fascinating.

[dailykoff]

2. He was hit by cars TWICE.

I've figured he was taken out all along. Classic hit job. Thanks for posting this.

[fortyfeetunder]

3. Take it to the Greatest page

A must read this Sunday AM.

[bigtree]

7. you're right

great Sunday read

[mamalone]

4. My first thought....

is how much something like this will mean to our Obama. As a single mama, I know firsthand how kids, and especially boys, cling to anything positive or admirable about their daddy. Obama isn't a child now, of course, but I'll wager he still hungers to know that his father was a good man who did good and admirable things.

[bbgrunt]

5. very interesting. thanks for the link.

[TwilightGardener]

6. Every time I see that photo, I just feel sad--that little kid hugging his

father's arm and looking so overjoyed at having his father finally with him--and then Barack never saw him again after that visit, IIRC.

[bigtree]

8. yeah

I found myself considering it even more when I read this account of his father's past.