Lolo Soetoro
Born	(1935-01-02)2 January 1935 Bandung, Dutch East Indies
Died	2 March 1987(1987-03-02) (aged 52) Jakarta, Indonesia
Education	Gadjah Mada University (BA) University of Hawaii, Manoa (MA)
Spouses	Ann Dunham ​ ​ (m. 1965; div. 1980)​ Erna Kustina ​ (m. 1980)​
Children	Barack Obama (stepson) Maya Soetoro-Ng (b. 1970) Yusuf Aji (b. 1981) Rahayu Nurmaida (b. 1984)

Lolo Soetoro (EYD: Lolo Sutoro; Javanese pronunciation: [ˈlɒlɒ suːˈtɒrɒː]; 2 January 1935^[1] – 2 March 1987), also known as Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo^[2][3] or Mangundikardjo,^[4] was an Indonesian geographer who was the stepfather of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States.^[5]

Early life and education

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]

Marriage to Ann Dunham

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]

Later life

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.

Notes

References

• 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.