Lolo Soetoro, also known as Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo or Mangundikardjo, was the
Indonesian step-father of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States.
Early life and education Born in Bandung, West Java, Dutch East
Indies, Soetoro was the ninth of ten children of Martodihardjo, who was
employee of mining office from Yogyakarta. Soetoro's father and eldest
brother were killed during the Indonesian National Revolution, when
Indonesia won independence from the Dutch, and the Dutch army burned the
family's home. Soetoro fled with his mother to the countryside.
Soetoro earned his bachelor's degree in geography from Gadjah Mada University,
in Yogyakarta. In 1962, Soetoro, then a civilian employee of the Indonesian Army
Topographic Service, obtained an East-West Center grant for graduate
study in geography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He arrived in Honolulu
in September 1962 and graduated from the university with a M.A. in geography in
June 1964. 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 on March 15, 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–the
Indonesia-America Friendship Institute–which was subsidized by U.S.
government. Obama attended the Indonesian-language Santo Fransiskus
Asisi 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–the Institute of Management Education and Development.
Barry 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, Barry 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, 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." Later life
Soetoro married Erna Kustina in 1980 and had two children, a son, Yusuf Aji
Soetoro, and daughter, Rahayu Nurmaida Soetoro.
Soetoro died, age 52, on March 2, 1987, of liver failure, and was buried in
Tanah Kusir Cemetery, South Jakarta. Notes
References Dunham, S. Ann; Dewey, Alice G.; Cooper,
Nancy I.. Surviving against the odds: village industry in Indonesia. Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-4687-7.
Maraniss, David. Barack Obama: the story. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN
978-1-4391-6040-4. Obama, Barack [1995]. Dreams from my
father: a story of race and inheritance. New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN
1-4000-8277-3.