"The brothers," as Lewis Anthony Jr., an African-American in the class of 1977 put it, hung out together, often talking about issues involving race and civil rights. Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy. 'Many people call Obama aloof, and he hasn't made a lot of friends in Washington,' Brinkley said. Coaches have recalled how he never went anywhere without a ball. Greg Orme, a fellow varsity basketball player, was Obamas constant companion. Allman also gaveTIME a snapshot of Obamas yearbook entry to her. But those talks, Kakugawa said, were not about race. But he took the high road and showed a lot of integrity. "I don't imagine the decision to let him stay behind was an easy one for anyone," Soetoro-Ng said. One of those kids was Orme, a smart, respectful teenager from a white, middle-class family. The perfect tummy control bodysuit, a popcorn gadget, more bestsellers starting at $8. 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. Since January, more than a dozen news organizations from around the globe, from the BBC to TV Asahi to People magazine, have dispatched reporters to Oahu. 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 compose notes to friends and family and include photos or quotes that best represent them. "Stanley loved that little boy," said Abercrombie, now a Democratic congressman from Hawaii. The White House says Obama is playing golf with some of his longtime friends including Mike Ramos, Greg Orme and Bobby Titcomb. We were all cracking up, and everyone was smiling, says Allman. The photos and interviews are in the new issue of TIME, which is out on Friday. And the accounts bear out much of Obama's self-portrait as someone deeply affected by his father's abandonment yet able to thrive in greatly disparate worlds. Sheriff: Cleveland man shot after attacking man with hatchet at Morgan County campground Right around then, we really started getting into basketball., Obama was all business when it came to "the game. The comments below have not been moderated, By Maurer, who played ball with Obama from the seventh grade through their senior year, said Julius Erving, better known as Dr. J, was their basketball hero. Still, the story of his early years highlights how politics and autobiography are similar creatures: Each is shaped to serve a purpose. But Furushima, too, is learning to be on guard around the press. Hes off the grid, said Hale, who is now the schools head basketball coach. After their relationship, she went on to marry a Serbian Boxer named Bob Bozic who once tried to rob $60,000 from a bank. As Obama's senior year drew to a close, his mother sent him letters from afar, about life in Indonesia and her work there with non-profit groups doing economic development. He was always very calm, very level-headed, very rational. He describes making friends easily, becoming fluent in Indonesian in just six months and melding quite easily into the very foreign fabric of Jakarta. It was hard to imagine that he felt that way, because he just seemed happy all the time, smiling all the time, she said. I saw an old forgotten man/On an old, forgotten road, begins the 12-line poem. 'We were all cracking up, and everyone was smiling.'. He would bring up worldly topics far beyond his years. He showed leadership and caring for his teammates, McLachlin said. Others almost certainly illustrate how carefully the young man guarded the secret of his loneliness from even those who knew him best. "He was very intelligent and witty. On page 271 of the 1979 Oahuan, Obama's entry reflects the crossroads he found himself at as he prepared for life beyond Hawaii. Asked Saturday about Kakugawa's recollections, the Obama campaign declined to make the senator available. Corky Siemaszko is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital. ', The comments below have not been moderated, President Obama waves his veto pen in the face of incoming Republican majority, Americans again name Hillary Clinton the most admired woman in the world and Obama the most admired man (and Princess Kate outranks Elizabeth Warren), Secret Service agents blame White House security lapses on post-9/11 demands to protect more people with less money but lawmakers say agency has been unaccountable for years, Military couple 'not at all' upset that President Obama's golf game had them booted from Hawaii course hours before their weddingas groom boasts he could beat his boss at golf, Pavement where disabled woman gestured at cyclist before fatal crash, TN residents say Jack Daniel's distillery spews black mold, Incredible footage of Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russians in Bakhmut, Pro-Ukrainian drone lands on Russian spy planes exposing location, 'Buster is next!' Furushima said that many of her classmates have expressed dismay at Obamas rendering of the past. "But it could be a lonely place. 21:01 GMT 31 Dec 2014. McCormack - now Kelli Allman - told TIME that the group sipped champagne before enjoying an evening of photos, dinner and dancing. 14:27 GMT 23 May 2013 He thanked "Tut and Gramps," his nicknames for Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, but didn't mention his faraway mother. . Life without a father It was a complicated time. They have a different level of affection for you than friends you meet later in life. 00:53 GMT 31 Dec 2014 Old friend disputes memoir Every senior graduating from Punahou gets to design a quarter-page in the yearbook. Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb, and Greg Orme-friends from Obama's high school daze in Hawaii-joined the president for a round on the links at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Saturday morning. You are extremely sweet and foxy, he wrote. It was a really fun, happy time. In his poem, An Old Man, there are glimpses of a tortured adolescent as well as a budding orator. What Obama and his companions talk about during their many hours alone is anyone's guess. Still, all of his teachers at the Catholic school recognized leadership qualities in him. Obama, too, was about to journey far from these familiar shores. He is unyielding in the things he believes in., I think hes done an unbelievable job as president, he said. 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. The man is staggering and numb but eventually pulls out forgotten dignity from under his flaking coat,/And walks a straight line along the crooked world.. 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. Now that life story is being edited by others. "All of them were imperfect but all of them loved him fiercely, and I believe he took the best qualities from each of them." 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. When it rained, Obama and his pals went bowling, instead. When asked about the discrepancy, Obama said in a recent interview, "It might have been an Ebony or it might have been who knows what it was?" 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. His biggest struggles were his feelings of abandonment. So did Maurer, who is now a pastor in Houston. "He never verbalized any of that," Orme said during a telephone interview from his home in Oregon. And when tempers flared, Barry was the peacemaker. But Kakugawa, in the interview Saturday, said Obama's recollection of that conversation was mistaken. Adept at nailing long jump shots, Obama was called "Barry O'Bomber" by teammates. He knew the really small apartment that Mr. Obama lived in with his grandparents and what a talker Gramps was. 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. 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. To them, the characteristics Obama displayed on the hardwood as one of the Sons of Oahu were evident in the way he handled the daunting responsibilities as leader of the free world. ___ 10:40 a.m. Speaking up for yourself., I gave them more playing time, McLachlin chuckled. The photos appear in the new issue of TIME, which hits news stands Friday. 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. In April 2011, Mr. Titcomb was arrested on a charge of soliciting prostitution in a Honolulu sting operation, but the reunions with the president never stopped. According to the book, the characters representing Orme and the other friend asked to leave the party after just an hour, saying they felt out of place. Yet even Obama has acknowledged the limits of memoir. But twice that year the group gathered in Hawaii in August before the Democratic National Convention and in December after Mr. Obamas election. "His friends called him `Negro,' " Darmawan said. Obama and his family have been in his native Hawaii since December 20 for the Christmas holiday. 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. His wife and daughters are skiing in Colorado. A close friend of Obama's from their teenage years, Greg Orme, spent so much time with Dunham that he, too, called him "Gramps." A young black man struggles for acceptance at an institution of privilege, where he finds himself growing so angry and disillusioned at the world around him that he turns to alcohol and drugs. When a friend gave him shrimp paste instead of chocolate, he yelled, "Curang, curang!" "They were like brothers," says Allman. Throughout his youth, as depicted in his first book, he always found ways to meld into even the most uninviting of communities. 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. The fun may wear off, if history is any guide. Every time out hed come over and chat with me about my stroke, my health, he said. The idea that his biggest struggle was race is [bull]." 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. But it was on the court in the off-season that Obama seemed to be even happier. Basketball was the great equalizer, he said. The real Ray, Keith Kakugawa, is half black and half Japanese. But we never talked race." Cook wrote that she saw his perfect woman as 'very strong, very upright, a fighter, a laugher, experienced - a black woman I keep seeing her as'. He recently played golf with his boyhood friend on a return to Hawaii, and the president also invited him to his 49th birthday party in. We have had presidents who have not modeled that super well., We had a long basketball career together, Orme recalled in a telephone interview from his home in Eugene, Oregon. You gotta give him that.. Far less is known about Obama's buddies, of course, than about the president himself. We have this tradition to head home to Hawaii for Christmas. Thats what we did to fit in, he said. Many of the men were black. Like Mr. Obama, he was of mixed parentage the son of a Filipino father and a Czech mother and his parents were divorced. In 2006, Mr. Obama used the family Christmas holiday there to decide whether to run for president. The Secret Service stopped a man who briefly flew a drone near the president's motorcade Monday as the president and his friends were returning from golf at the Mid-Pacific Country Club. In his day, he was a better basketball player than a golfer. ", We would be like, Hey lets go to the beach, Bendix recalled. In a new introduction to the reissued edition of "Dreams," he noted that the dangers of writing an autobiography included "the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer [and] selective lapses of memory." I am in poor health.. On prom night, the pair double-dated. At the same time, several of his oft-recited stories may not have happened in the way he has recounted them. After a recent lunch with a reporter, he winked at a table of faculty-lounge colleagues and joked, This one is with Playgirl.. In a May 21, 2008 Sports Illustrated interview, Obama spoke of the importance of basketball in his life. 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.. All Rights Reserved. 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. kscharnberg@tribune.com kbarker@tribune.com, Column: For the Chicago Blackhawks remodel to work, their new house had better be built on a strong foundation, Merrillville food and beverage tax edging closer to reality, Remains found in Rockdale more than 25 years ago identified as Aurora woman, Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. Orme recalled that years later, at Obama's wedding reception in Chicago, Obama brought the crowd to tears when he spoke of his recently deceased maternal grandfather and how he made a little boy with an absent father feel as though he was never alone. 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. He was probably studying them and learning from them. "If this story is eight paragraphs, seven of them go to Greg. "He would be very helpful with friends. Hes kind of in and out.