Obama is a hero to me – we lost our fathers at the same age

This year on Father’s Day, I felt a familiar feeling. I have not seen my father since I had barely turned 11 years old.

I felt empty. It’s easy to begin to feel like I’m the only person going through the struggle of not having a father. Anyone who grew up without a parent knows that you’re not just losing a parent, there is knowledge lost when a mom or dad disappears out of a child’s life.

I have always found solace in knowing that one of my personal heroes, Barack Obama, went through a similar struggle in not knowing his father. Losing a mentor can send many kids down the wrong path especially when there’s no one else there to fill that void. My mother, like Barack’s, has done so much for me but even a superwoman can’t do everything.

On Father’s Day I was looking through a New York Times article on letters the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture had found. They were letters written by Barack Obama Sr, our president’s estranged father.

The letters gave a peek into the life of our president’s father. It fascinated me. What would it have been like to have known my father? What would it have been like if my father told me stories of his life like Obama Sr told of his in these letters? It would at least make me feel like I knew a little bit more about myself, about where I come from.

The NYT article touched on the struggles Obama wrote about in Dreams of My Father – growing up without a dad. “I still didn’t know the man my father had been,” President Obama wrote. “What had shaped his ambitions?”

This brought me comfort. A man so powerful and intelligent, someone I looked up to, had taken words right out of my own mouth. He wasn’t outwardly pained but because I knew this disappointment it spoke to me like a thought in my own head.

I had also seen another quote from Obama that had moved me even more. In a NYT interview, the president, Bryan Cranston and Philip Galanes each touched on growing up without a father. Obama said:

“There’s a wonderful quote that I thought was LBJ’s, but I could never verify it: ‘Every man is either trying to live up to his father’s expectations or make up for his father’s mistakes.’ I spent a lot of time trying to figure out, in the absence of an immediate role model, what it meant to be a man — or in my case, a black man or a man of mixed race in this society. But as Bryan said, there’s no checklist. It’s only later you realize the things you may have done in search of that absent father.”

Remembering the quote he had cautiously attributed to Lyndon Johnson I posted it, in place of what I would’ve posted if I had known my father. In place of something if my father was still around.

Flash forward to September 13, 2016 and I am 20 feet away from my hero, Barack Obama. Seeing him in person, this man who has inspired me because of his intellect, oratory skill, and achievements despite adversity was surreal. At the same time it hit me, it’s possible. Whatever I was looking for, like Obama with his father, did not matter. The man in front of me persevered, and I will too.

My case is not special. There are plenty of other boys and girls who go through what I went through. And I’m positive that many others have found the same sort of comfort in the president I saw before me. There could have been someone even closer to me in the crowd than Obama was who felt the same as I did.

Seeing the president as an adult, who looked to him for guidance throughout adolescence, left me with only one sincere thing to say.

Thanks, Obama.