The Ghost of a Father

Abercrombie witnessed the crumbling of Barack Obama Sr. during a trip to Africa in 1968. He and a mutual friend from Hawaii stayed with their old pal in Nairobi. "It was clear to us how disappointed he was," Abercrombie recalls. "He was drinking. There was a bitterness in him, an edge."

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Years later, after "Little Barry" had become an Illinois state senator and had unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) for a congressional seat, Abercrombie telephoned Obama to let him know that he had been a friend of his father's. Obama was grateful for the call, Abercrombie says, but left the impression that "he didn't want to pursue it."

Though both now serve in Congress and Abercrombie is an ardent supporter of Obama's presidential campaign, they have never discussed his dad. "We've never explored it, not even a little bit," Abercrombie says. "And that might have something to do with him."

Obama says he normally sees Abercrombie on Capitol Hill and the conversation is typically about politics and legislation. "It's certainly not out of a sense of avoidance."

But it is also true that Obama, after his election as the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, wrote a 442-page memoir, published in 1995, that deeply explores his father's absence. It is rich with dialogue, precise recollections and emotion-laden self-analysis. It concludes with several chapters about his visit to Kenya, where he meets siblings, aunts, uncles, his grandmother and his father's ex-wives, and he finally understands the turmoil that consumed his father's life. At the end of the book, Obama is sitting between the graves of his father and paternal grandfather, weeping.

"When my tears were finally spent, I felt a calmness wash over me," he writes. "I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America -- the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago -- all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain I felt was my father's pain."

At some point, maybe enough is enough.

"I think that book was very cathartic for him, and it was a hard book to write," Michelle Obama says. "It was very hard for him to get all the pieces and make sense of them. But once you do that, you're done. I think he has clarity on that part of his life."

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Those who know Obama say he didn't seem to need a replacement father.

He was always good at finding "different kinds of people he could learn from," says Jerry Kellman, a Chicago community organizer who worked with Obama for three years. Abner Mikva became one of those people, as did the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor, as did Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr., among others.

Kellman notes that "mentors very quickly ceased to be mentors with Barack, they became collaborators. . . . He was able to form intimate relationships with people, but they were friendships. He was not in search of surrogate fathers."