Soetoro was born on 2 January 1935 in Bandung, West Java, as the ninth of ten children of Soewarno Martodihardjo (1897–1951), an employee of a mining office from Yogyakarta, and Djoeminah (born 1900).[1][6]
His brothers were Supoyo (1919–1955), Supomo (born 1921), Sugiyo (born 1925), Bambang Sugito (born 1927), and Soemitro Soetoro (born 1933), and his sisters were Cuk Muhsidi (born 1923), Titik Imam Sutiknyo (born 1929), Soewardinah (born 1931), and Uki Gunowiyono Soetoro.[7][6] As of 2010, all of his siblings had died.[7] Soetoro earned his bachelor's degree in geography from Gadjah Mada University, in Yogyakarta.[1] 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.[8] He arrived in Honolulu in September 1962 and graduated from the university with a M.A. in geography in June 1964.[9]
Marriage to Ann Dunham
Soetoro met the divorced Ann Dunham at the East-West Center while both were students at the University of Hawaii,[10][11][12] and married on 15 March 1965.[12][13] Soetoro, a geographer,[12][14] returned to Indonesia in 1966[15] to help map Western New Guinea[16] for the Indonesian government, while Dunham and her son Barack Obama moved into her parents' house in Honolulu to complete her studies.[17][18]
Dunham and her six-year-old son joined Soetoro in Jakarta in 1967.[19] The family initially lived for two and a half years in a modest stucco and red tile house in a newly built neighborhood in Menteng Dalam village in South Jakarta[19][20][21] and owned a new Japanese motorcycle.[22] Dunham worked as assistant director of the Indonesia-America Friendship Institute[23] while Obama attended the Indonesian-language Santo Fransiskus Asisi (St. Francis of Assisi) Catholic School.[19][20][21]
In 1970, with a new job in government relations[24] at Union Oil Company,[1][16][12] Soetoro moved his family two miles north to a rented house,[19][21] with a car replacing their motorcycle.[25] Dunham was a department head and a director of the Lembaga Pendidikan dan Pengembangan Manajemen (LPPM)–the Institute of Management Education and Development.[23] Obama attended the Indonesian-language Besuki School.[19][20][21]
In mid-1971, Obama moved back to Hawaii to attend Punahou School.[28] In August 1972, Dunham rejoined Obama with her daughter and began graduate study at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.[23][29] She gained an M.A. in anthropology in December 1974[18] and returned with her daughter to Jakarta in 1975[23][29] while Obama remained in Hawaii.[30] In 1976, Dunham and her daughter lived for half a year with Soetoro's 76-year-old mother.[29]
Dunham became increasingly interested in Indonesian culture while Soetoro became more interested in that of the West,[10] and their relationship was in conflict over differing values.[31] They divorced on 6 November 1980.[10]
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.[32] He described his stepfather as following "a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths."[33][34] 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."[19]
Later life
Soetoro married Erna Kustina in 1980 and had two children, son Bayu Yusuf Aji Soetoro (born 1981), and daughter Rahayu Nurmaida Soetoro (born 1984).[35] He also had an adoptive daughter, Holiah Soetoro (1957–2010).[35][36]
Soetoro died at Pertamina Central Hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia, on 2 March 1987 (some source reported the year as 1993), due to liver failure and secondary to unreported causes at the time of this note, at the age of 52 and was buried at Tanah Kusir Cemetery.[26][37]
Notes
^ abcdHabib, Ridlawn (5 November 2008). "Kalau ke Jogja, Barry bisa habiskan seekor ayam baceman" [If traveling to Yogyakrta, Barry can eat one whole chicken]. Jawa Pos (in Indonesian). Surabya. Retrieved 10 November 2008. Google Translate's English translation Lolo studied geography at Gadjah Mada University and got a scholarship from the Indonesian Army Topographic Service. After working for the Indonesian Army Topographic Service, he worked for an American oil company, Unocal [Union Oil Company].
At UH, she fell in love with a Javanese candidate for a master's degree in geography named Soetoro Martodihardjo, who went by the Javanese nickname, "Lolo" Soetoro. They married in 1965 ... The Dutch had ceded Western New Guinea to Indonesia, and geographer Lolo Soetoro returned to map the new divide between Eastern Guinea, which was under British/Australian control, and the Western portion. In the early 1970s … "He got a job with Union Oil," [Alice G.] Dewey said. "Lolo joked that they got divorced because she was falling in love with Javanese handcrafts and he was becoming an American oil man, which wasn't far from the truth.
^Date of marriage from Stanley Ann's application to amend her US passport, 6/29/1967.
^Obama (1995, 2004), p. 43: He was working for the army as a geologist [sic], surveying roads and tunnels, when she arrived. It was mind-numbing work that didn't pay very much …
^ abMaraniss, David (22 August 2008). "Though Obama had to leave to find himself, it is Hawaii that made his rise possible". washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 13 January 2011. Lolo was off working for Union Oil … He had been summoned back to his country from Hawaii in 1966 and sent to work in New Guinea for a year … "Kenyan student wins fellowship". Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 20 June 1962. p. 7. Griffin, John (22 June 1962). "First UH African graduate gives view on E-W Center". The Honolulu Advertiser. p. B?.
^ abEssoyan, Susan (13 September 2008). "A woman of the people; a symposium recalls the efforts of Stanley Ann Dunham to aid the poor". Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Retrieved 20 April 2011. Dunham earned her bachelor's, master's and Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Hawaii.
Dewey, Alice; White, Geoffrey (November 2008). "Ann Dunham: a personal reflection". Anthropology News. 49 (8): 20. doi:10.1111/an.2008.49.8.20. reprinted by: Dewey, Alice; White, Geoffrey (9 March 2009). "Ann Dunham: a personal reflection". Honolulu: University of Hawaii Department of Anthropology. Archived from the original on 10 June 2010. Retrieved 13 January 2011. Dunham (2009), p. 376: "S. Ann Dunham (1942–95), mother of President Barack Obama and Maya Soetoro-ng, earned her undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees, all in anthropology, from the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa."
Obama and his mother moved from Honolulu to Jakarta to join Soetoro in 1967, when Obama was 6. In their first neighborhood ... Soetoro usually was too busy working, first for the Indonesian army and later for a Western oil company. Zulfan Adi, a former neighborhood playmate of Obama's who has been cited in news reports as saying Obama regularly attended Friday prayers with Soetoro, told the Tribune he was not certain about that when pressed about his recollections. He only knew Obama for a few months, during 1970, when his family moved to the neighborhood. In late 1970, Obama's family moved to another neighborhood, and Obama enrolled in Public Elementary School Menteng No. 1 ...
^Obama (1995, 2004), p. 32. Maraniss (2012), pp. 230, 240.
^ abcdDunham, S. Ann (2008). "Tentang penulis (About the author)". Pendekar-pendekar besi Nusantara: kajian antropologi tentang pandai besi tradisional di Indonesia (Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving and thriving against all odds). Bandung: Mizan. pp. 211–219. ISBN978-979-433-534-5.
^Sheridan, Michael; Baxter, Sarah (28 January 2007). "Secrets of Obama family unlocked". The Sunday Times. London. p. 25. Retrieved 27 August 2009. Soetoro became a government relations consultant with a big US oil company.reprinted[usurped] on 2007-02-01 by The Muslim Observer
^ abFornek, Scott; Good, Greg (9 September 2007). "The Obama family tree"(PDF). Chicago Sun-Times. p. 2B. Archived from the original(PDF) on 25 June 2008. Retrieved 21 June 2008.
^Jones, Bart; Lefkowitz, Melanie; Henderson, Nia-Malika; Evans, Martin C. (8 November 2008). "Timeline: Obama through the years". Newsday. Melville, N.Y. Retrieved 9 November 2008.
^Obama (1995, 2004). pp. 58–59. Maraniss (2012), pp. 264–266.
^ abcDunham (2009), pp. xli–xliv: "January 8, 1976 letter from Ann Dunham Soetoro (Jl. Polowijan 3, Kraton, Yogyakarta) to Prof. Alice G. Dewey (Univ. of Hawaii, Honolulu)."
Dunham, S. Ann; Dewey, Alice G.; Cooper, Nancy I. (2009). Surviving against the odds: village industry in Indonesia. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. ISBN978-0-8223-4687-6.
