O’Reilly Factor correspondent Jesse Watters spoke to the President’s former classmate, Bernice Bowers, who attended the Punahou School in Honolulu with Barack Obama. She shared her memories of “Barry” as a student, her feelings about his friends and family, elaborated on the school’s unique curriculum and weighed in on the infamous birth certificate controversy.
WATTERS: Okay, so you went to school with President Barack
Obama?
BOWERS: Yes. I was lucky enough to be one of his classmates
from fifth grade on.
WATTERS: And, he was known as Barry back then?
BOWERS: Right. Barry. And, he really had a great
personality, but was one of us... He was one of many kids. He didn’t
necessarily stand out from an academic stand point that we knew of, but he’s
actually quite bright and tried to hide it beneath a veneer of cool. He was
actually extremely good in terms of English and history and politics and
economics, but again had a very very casual way about him.
WATTERS: And he still does have that casual feel. Now, in
terms of the classes that you went to… What classes do you remember him being
in and participating in?
BOWERS: I think AP U.S. History was one of the strongest
memories I had of him, because we used to type our papers together in this little
corner office in the library. He would take file cards and type his entire
paper just from these file card notes. But, again, he was very understated.
And, he’s also changed a lot. While all of us who grew up and knew him want to
think that he’s the Barry that we know. We also have seen and clearly
understand that he transformed quite dramatically in college and in graduate
school and since then.
WATTERS: So, socially, President Obama. Who did he run with?
What was his crowd like?
BOWERS: He, again, had people who were just like him. Really
cool. And, really good people. The types of kids who would really go out of
their way to help a new kid or help people feel comfortable. And, you know, he
still is extremely close to those people and a lot us who are his classmates
actually knew him socially, but not the way his tight group does. And, they
still do. And, that’s what makes us, just as Americans, I think, really
appreciate him as a president because he still is very bonded with those same
people and very loyal to them.
WATTERS: Now, he recalled struggling a lot with his racial
identity when he was in school. Did you see that struggle? Or, was there a lot
of racial situation that permeated through the school?
BOWERS: I think that when you look at Hawaii in general,
you’ve got so many different racial groups and we all were struggling, I think,
with different types of angst that we didn’t even recognize in each other. And,
that’s the one thing that I think almost to a person, we were kind of surprised
at. It made us re-look at our whole high school experience, but honestly, I
think we’ve always known that Hawaii is this mixture of races. But, African
Americans were not widely populating our schools. They were mostly located in
the military families. So, that was really an eye-opener for us because African
Americans in our school really blended in with the rest of us and it made us
more sensitive to the fact that they really were a very small minority of the
population.
BOWERS: Our school was really a mixture of Asian and White
and mixed kids. So, I would say though, that there were very few African
Americans in that mixture.
WATTERS: Okay. Okay. And, did Barack Obama have a lot of
girlfriends? Because he doesn’t talk about it in his book. He said he actually
struggled to get dates. Do you recall that?
BOWERS: I think he really was one of those guys that, you
know, so many people really, really liked as a person. And, I think that
socially a lot of us were really not very adept at, you know, dating, or things
like that. So, I’d say that if he ever asked someone I’m sure they would’ve
gone with him in a heartbeat. But, seriously, he was just a really great
person. And I think, again, he’s changed so much since those days. I can’t say
as a classmate that I intimately know him or… But I can say that he was a
great, great person. From the very beginning. And, he’s evolved tremendously
into a great president.
WATTERS: Now, do you remember him dating? Now, if you he had
asked you out would you have said “yes”?
BOWERS: (Laughs) Again, any of us would’ve said “yes”. But,
honestly, he was really one of those people who you wanted to know, you wanted
to be around, he had this very great way and gracious way about him and he was
also really, you know, sort of, balanced in a lot of ways. He had a
self-knowledge and a maturity that I think we might not have recognized at the
time, but… Certainly, when you look at his poetry, when you look back at the
stuff that he said or did there is very much a very mature soul there.
WATTERS: He loved to play basketball. And, I know he played
on the varsity. Was that a big part of who he was? An athlete?
BOWERS: Yes. I mean, especially at Punahou, where athlete
scholars are really nurtured and highlighted. He was very proud of that and we
were very proud of him for that.
WATTERS: And, he said he experimented with pot and sometimes
cocaine, was that an issue in the school? Were drugs something that was
predominant then?
BOWERS: I especially think that the late 70s in Hawaii,
drugs were available and I think whenever you have a private school, where kids
might have more access, you’re gonna see more of it.
WATTERS: And, politically back then, did you see any trace
of his democratic leanings or any sort of liberal leadership?
BOWERS: Well, you know, we had an incredible background at
Punahou because we had an instructor who wove global understandings and
perspectives of all countries throughout our entire curriculum. His name was
Siegfreid Ramler. And, he had been an interpreter in the Nuremburg trials and
so he wanted to make sure that everything we did whether it was in Christian
ethics or history or literature really wove together all these perspectives of
different religions and different countries and histories. And, I would say
that we all really benefited in having a global view that way. And, I’d say
when we first started to hear Barack’s policies and the President’s stance on
different issues, it made us so proud to hear a global voice. And that’s what
we saw growing up, we were very lucky to have that.
WATTERS: So, you’re saying that the curriculum lend itself
to more of a global view, a world view that you think Obama is encompassing in
his policies today?
BOWERS: Well, I certainly think that he and his family
really embodied that in the beginning. Whether Punahou added a lot to it or
not, but I can say that in particular the Punahou curriculum in the 70s was
extremely focused on building global citizens. That was the goal.
WATTERS: And, the clique that he rode with, were those
mostly comprised of athletes? Black? White? Asian? Describe his crew.
BOWERS: I’d say you know you’ve got a real mixture because
there was no way you could have a group in Hawaii which wasn’t basically a mix
of ethnicities and also athletes and folks who might not have been so athletic,
but who were, you know, very active in class.
WATTERS: And, do you remember anything about his family
life? Because I know his father left and he was with his mother and his
grandparents.
BOWERS: There were several memories I think that we all had
that were very strong and one was when his father came to speak to the 5th
grade class. Everybody was really in sort of in awe of him. He came in a suit.
He came from the East/West center. He not only very professorial, but we all
thought that here was, he felt like an ambassador or a statesman, that made a
big impression I think on all of us. I know his grandparents were extremely
supportive of him, and really were the ones, you know that we saw on campus.
But, I’d say more than anything, his close-knit group of friends, really
close-knit group of friends, knew his family much more than any of us ever did.
WATTERS: What do you remember that his father spoke about to
the class?
BOWERS: It was actually about Kenya. And, you know, it
imbued the sense of, again, this world-view that there is a world outside of
the United States and a different perspective that started to resonate with
what we were being taught.
WATTERS: Now, last question. There was that controversy
about his birth certificate. When you heard that, how did that make you feel
when everybody was talking about that?
BOWERS: I thought it was the most ridiculous debate I had
ever seen. Because all of us were born in Hawaii at that time, we have the same
birth certificates… If you happen to have kept the original one, which is a
very thin extremely blackened out piece of paper with, you know, it’s very
fragile, and what was even funnier was that our classmates, we have twins in
our class, they were born right before then, literally their numbers in that
hospital were right before his. Their mother knew the doctor who delivered him.
So, we all felt that that was an extremely useless debate and wish that
American hadn’t gone there.
WATTERS: Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I
appreciate it. And, aloha?
BOWERS: Aloha
WATTERS: Thank you very much
