Lolo Soetoro

Soetoro was born in Bandung, West Java, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), the ninth of 10 children of Soewarno Martodihardjo, an employee of a mining office from Yogyakarta.[1] 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.[6] He arrived in Honolulu in September 1962 and graduated from the university with a M.A. in geography in June 1964.[7]

Soetoro met the divorced Ann Dunham at the East-West Center while both were students at the University of Hawaii,[8][9][10] and married on 15 March 1965.[10][11] Soetoro, a geographer,[10][12] returned to Indonesia in 1966[13] to help map Western New Guinea[14] for the Indonesian government, while Dunham and her son Barack Obama moved into her parents' house in Honolulu to complete her studies.[15][16]

Dunham and her six-year-old son joined Soetoro in Jakarta in 1967.[17] 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[17][18][19] and owned a new Japanese motorcycle.[20] Dunham worked as assistant director of the Indonesia-America Friendship Institute[21] while Obama attended the Indonesian-language Santo Fransiskus Asisi (St. Francis of Assisi) Catholic School.[17][18][19]

In 1970, with a new job in government relations[22] at Union Oil Company,[1][14][10] Soetoro moved his family two miles north to a rented house,[17][19] with a car replacing their motorcycle.[23] Dunham was a department head and a director of the Lembaga Pendidikan dan Pengembangan Manajemen (LPPM)–the Institute of Management Education and Development.[21] Obama attended the Indonesian-language Besuki School.[17][18][19]

On 15 August 1970, Soetoro and Dunham had a daughter, Maya Kasandra Soetoro.[24][25]

In mid-1971, Obama moved back to Hawaii to attend Punahou School.[26] In August 1972, Dunham rejoined Obama with her daughter and began graduate study at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.[21][27] She gained an M.A. in anthropology in December 1974[16] and returned with her daughter to Jakarta in 1975[21][27] while Obama remained in Hawaii.[28] In 1976, Dunham and her daughter lived for half a year with Soetoro's 76-year-old mother.[27]

Dunham became increasingly interested in Indonesian culture while Soetoro became more interested in that of the West,[8] and their relationship was in conflict over differing values.[29] They divorced on 6 November 1980.[8]

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.[30] He described his stepfather as following "a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient, classical, and Dharmic philosophies such as that of the Hindu."[31][32] 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."[17]

Soetoro married Erna Kustina in 1980 and had two children, son Yusuf Aji Soetoro (born 1981), and daughter Rahayu Nurmaida Soetoro (born 1984).[33]

Soetoro died, age 52, on 2 March 1987, of liver failure,[24][31] and was buried in Tanah Kusir Cemetery, South Jakarta.

• Dunham, S. Ann; Dewey, Alice G.; Cooper, Nancy I. (2009). Surviving against the odds: village industry in Indonesia. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-4687-6.
• Maraniss, David (2012). Barack Obama: the story. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4391-6040-4.
• Obama, Barack (2004) [1995]. Dreams from my father: a story of race and inheritance. New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 1-4000-8277-3.