Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Obama's Okie connection
Interesting article in Sunday's Ponca City paper. The Dunhams, Barack's grandparents, lived in Ponca from 1948 to 1951. Mr Dunham was a salesman at Paris Furniture, and Barack's mother started elementary school in Ponca. Apparently the Dunhams didn't leave a big impression on the city, because the connection has just now surfaced more or less accidentally.
My parents were married in Ponca in 1947, but moved elsewhere for college shortly thereafter, returning in '52; so they wouldn't have encountered the Dunhams. I'd speculate that my uncle Bob might have known Mr Dunham, because Bob was an active leftist at that time (voting for Henry Wallace)... and there weren't a lot of active leftists in Ponca.
Rambling a bit: Bob was something of a tragic character. He was sophisticated and intelligent, had big dreams that could have been achieved. But he never quite had the gumption to break out of expectations, and ended up doing the same dull job his father had done. A classic case of "the perfect as the enemy of the good." Alcohol took over, and he died fairly young. It was Bob's death in 1973 that spurred me to break out of my own expected pattern, to skip perfection and fulfill my own modest dreams. I did just that, and I don't regret it.
Bob's wife, equally sophisticated and intelligent, is the basis for the character of Fran in Polistra's Dream; I needed to "free her spirit" in literary form, to see what she might have done in a slightly different universe. ¶ 2:35 PM
My parents were married in Ponca in 1947, but moved elsewhere for college shortly thereafter, returning in '52; so they wouldn't have encountered the Dunhams. I'd speculate that my uncle Bob might have known Mr Dunham, because Bob was an active leftist at that time (voting for Henry Wallace)... and there weren't a lot of active leftists in Ponca.
Rambling a bit: Bob was something of a tragic character. He was sophisticated and intelligent, had big dreams that could have been achieved. But he never quite had the gumption to break out of expectations, and ended up doing the same dull job his father had done. A classic case of "the perfect as the enemy of the good." Alcohol took over, and he died fairly young. It was Bob's death in 1973 that spurred me to break out of my own expected pattern, to skip perfection and fulfill my own modest dreams. I did just that, and I don't regret it.
Bob's wife, equally sophisticated and intelligent, is the basis for the character of Fran in Polistra's Dream; I needed to "free her spirit" in literary form, to see what she might have done in a slightly different universe. ¶ 2:35 PM
