Was Barack Obama conceived in a YMCA in Honolulu?

Short answer: maybe.

A University of Hawaii Manoa administrator and scholar says the father of the 44th U.S. president, Barack Obama Sr., was among the original dormitory residents of the Charles Atherton House, as it is officially called, on University Avenue.

Obama Sr. was a guest of the East-West Center in 1960 and 1961, when he met the president’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, in 1960. Barack Jr. was born on Aug. 4, 1961.

“In case you do the math, there’s a good chance that Barack Obama was conceived in this building,” William Chapman, the interim dean of the UH Manoa School of Architecture, emailed me last week.

Chapman, who is also an American Studies professor, gently cautioned, “My input should be informational not avocational. You should be able to find plenty of other folks to express their opposition.”

Chapman’s primary point is not about whether the former president was indeed conceived in the Atherton House, which happens to be located directly across the street from the architecture school. His interest is in the fate of the house itself, which is slated for major structural changes that come as part of an $8 million agreement in 2016 between UH, the UH Foundation and the YMCA of Honolulu.

According to a press release at the time, the foundation planned to spend up to $5 million on renovations and upgrades. The property consists of the Charles Atherton House and the Mary Atherton Richards House.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported last year that the plan now calls for a $58.6 million “innovation and entrepreneurship center” where students will live, learn and work.

Chapman, who also serves on the Hawaii Historic Places Review Board, is not crazy about the plans.

“The unfortunate scheme calls for the demolition of the 1959 Mary Atherton Richards Building and the partial demolition of the Charles Atherton House, leaving only the street-facing façades,” he writes in his paper, which you can read below.

The thought of seeing an “Obama Was Conceived Here” plaque on the pink façade got my mind running. It’s not the same as, say, “George Washington Slept Here,” but there is a great deal of public interest in all things presidential.

It also got me wondering why Hawaii has yet to name something after its only island-born president, in spite of several concerted attempts.

‘More Than Possible’

I put the conception question to Neil Abercrombie, who arrived in Hawaii by way of New York the same time Obama Sr. arrived by way of Kenya in the fall of 1959, shortly after Hawaii became the 50th state.

“It’s more than possible,” Abercrombie told me about the Atherton speculation after first laughing. “In my mind’s eye the answer is ‘yes.’ I would have not have thought of it unless someone mentioned it.”

Abercrombie said he never met Obama Sr., a close friend, at the Atherton House but confirms that he did indeed live there in the early 1960s.

“Every weekend we would gather in someone’s apartment and play Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee LPs on a record player and eat pizza and drink beer,” he said.

Some 50 years later,  in April 2011, it was Abercrombie — then governor — who strongly condemned Donald Trump’s birther conspiracy about then-President Obama and said it was promoted for political purposes. Abercrombie pointed out to reporters that he was in Honolulu when Obama was born and first met him as an infant.

“Let’s be serious,” the governor told news media including Fox News and USA Today. “It is simply reprehensible to have this kind of conversation. Insulting someone’s mother and father speaks about the person who is doing it.”

As for the failed local efforts to name something after Obama, Abercrombie notes that the former president has never pushed the idea.

“And it wasn’t that long ago that he was president,” he said.

‘Barack Obama Way’

Still, other locales have named things like landmarks, schools and highways after Obama. USA Today reported in 2019 that there is a Barack Obama Way in New Albany Township, Indiana; a Barack Obama Boulevard in Pahokee, Florida; and a Barack Obama Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia.

Wikipedia lists scores of places and things named for Obama. He even has an animal species named after him, placida barackobamai, a sea slug. And some have tried to make a buck by hawking Obama-themed tour maps.

Unsuccessful efforts to honor Obama in Hawaii include state Sen. Stanley Chang’s proposal to rename Sandy Beach to Barack Obama Beach.

Chang and his fellow legislators also have considered — and abandoned, for now — requiring the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to place markers throughout the state to indicate “significant sites” in Obama’s life, ranging from the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children (where he was born), the Baskin-Robbins on King Street (where the teenage Obama worked) and the Koko Crater Trail (where he has hiked).

Asked about the lack of physical honors, Colin Moore, a political scientist and director of the Public Policy Center at UH Manoa, says, “I think the big issue is that he is still alive, and most of the other people who have had things named after them are dead.”

Moore also observes that Obama’s political career began in Illinois, which will house his presidential library. And, although he visits annually to vacation, Moore says, “There’s a sense that he isn’t linked to Hawaii as, say, Harry Truman is linked to Missouri or Ronald Reagan to California.”

It’s worth noting, however, that Obama held the inaugural program and workshop for his Obama Foundation in Honolulu in 2019, even though it is a Chicago-based nonprofit that oversees the creation of the Barack Obama Presidential Center.

Fittingly, the ceremony was held at the East-West Center. Obama joked in his remarks that “I basically wouldn’t exist if it were not for the University of Hawaii.”

He also said it’s “rumored” that he was born a mile from UH, although he said he could not vouch for it because he was “very small at the time.”