Before Rev. Wright, there was Obama’s Mom

A lot of “strong personalities” shaped Senator Obama, including the mother he didn’t seem to like all that much if you read his book Dreams From My Father. Obama called his mother “the dominant figure in my formative years. . . . The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics.”

“She was not a standard-issue girl of her times. … She wasn’t part of the matched-sweater-set crowd,” said Wall, a classmate and retired philosophy teacher who used to make after-school runs to Seattle with Dunham to sit and talk — for hours and hours — in coffee shops.

“She touted herself as an atheist, and it was something she’d read about and could argue,” said Maxine Box, who was Dunham’s best friend in high school. “She was always challenging and arguing and comparing. She was already thinking about things that the rest of us hadn’t.”

In his best-selling book, “Dreams From My Father” and in campaign speeches, Obama frequently describes the story of his mother, who died of cancer in 1995, as a tale of the Heartland. She’s the white woman from the flatlands of Kansas and the only daughter of parents who grew up in the “dab-smack, landlocked center of the country,” in towns “too small to warrant boldface on a roadmap.”

Implicit in that portrayal is this message: If you have any lingering questions or doubts about the Hawaiian-born presidential candidate with a funny name, just remember that Mom hails from America’s good earth. That’s the log cabin story, or his version of Bill Clinton’s “Man from Hope.”

But interviews with their friends from Kansas, now in their mid-to-late 80s, and interviews with their daughter’s former classmates and teachers, now in their mid-60s or older, paint a vivid portrait of Barack Obama’s mother as a self-assured, iconoclastic young teen seemingly hell-bent to resist Eisenhower-era conformity.

Boyish-looking, Stanley Ann was prone to rolling her eyes when she heard something she didn’t agree with. She didn’t like her nose, she worried about her weight, she complained about her parents — especially her domineering father. Her sarcasm could be withering and, while she enjoyed arguing, she did not like to draw attention to herself. The bite of her wit was leavened by a good sense of humor.

While her girlfriends, including Box, regularly baby-sat, Stanley Ann showed no interest. “She felt she didn’t need to date or marry or have children,” Box recalled. “It wasn’t a put-down, it wasn’t hurtful. That’s just who she was.”

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