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Quick Background Overview Mount Vernon and Monticello, Hodgenville, Ky., home to Abe Lincoln’s log cabin and Hope, Ark., where Bill Clinton grew up, very often the homes of presidents become exciting visitor attractions. If you would like to see the “log cabin” of Barack Obama you would have to look on the 10th-floor of Honolulu apartment building on Beretania st. This is where he lived with his mother and grandparents from 1971 to 1976. However there is more than one childhood home in Honolulu to commemorate and preserve. Other than his four years in Indonesia between 1967 and 1972, Obama spent his time from birth to high school graduation in half a dozen Honolulu residences with one or more of his relatives. A presidential historian at George Mason University in Virginia, Rich Shenkman has said that presidents who grow up in humble circumstances – including modest childhood homes – instill the American dream demonstrating that anyone can be president. Obama certainly fits that statement and has been quoted as saying that his unusual life story “spans miles and generations, races and realities." You only have to look at the various homes in Honolulu where he dwelled to see a very broad and diverse beginning. Although born in Hawaii, President Obama’s childhood history spans all the way to Jakarta, Indonesia where he moved in 1967 at the age of six with his mother and her new husband whom she met at the University of Hawaii. Obama was returned home to Hawaii 4 years later to pursue a quality education at the prestigious Punahou School. He lived with his grandparents in apartment 1206 at 1617 S. Beretania street until his mother came back to Honolulu in 1973 to continue her study of anthropology at the university. They moved to a different apartment in the same building and remained there until Obama’s graduation from high school in 1979.
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