Life of Obama's Childhood Friend Takes Drastically Different Path
Story of Keith Kakugawa Provides Interesting Window Into Life of Obama
By JAKE TAPPER −− April 3, 2007
In his best-selling autobiography, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., writes movingly about his high school best friend, whom he calls "Ray." In his first year at Hawaii's elite Punahou School, then-9th-grader "Barry" Obama was befriended by Ray, who was two years older. "Despite the difference in age, we'd fallen into an easy friendship, due in no small part to the fact that together we made up almost half of Punahou's black high school population," Obama wrote. "I enjoyed his company; he had a warmth and brash humor. …"
Barack Obama, left, is running for president. His childhood friend Keith Kakugawa, right, is homeless. (AP Photo/ ABC) More PhotosWith Ray, who like Obama is multiracial, the future junior senator from Illinois would discuss his complicated issues about race and the father who had left his family.
・・・ His relationship with Obama was like that of brothers, Kakugawa told ABC News one recent afternoon in Los Angeles. "Everybody said they always saw him smiling and happy. I didn't. I got to see the turmoil, I got to see how he really felt.