Former President Barack Obama’s personal letters to his college girlfriend are being publicly displayed at Emory University.
“I trust you know that I miss you, that my concern for you is as wide as the air, my confidence in you as deep as the sea, my love rich and plentiful,” Obama said in the first of nine letters written between 1982 and 1984 to Alexandra McNear while he was a student at Columbia University, in Indonesia and working at Business International Corporation.
The missives — totaling 30 pages — chronicle the disintegration of his relationship with McNear, whom he met at Occidental College in California before Obama transferred to New York.
“I think of you often, though I stay confused about my feelings,” Obama wrote to McNear in 1983. “It seems we will ever want what we cannot have; that’s what binds us; that’s what keeps us apart.”
(AP Photo)
Obama went on to marry former first lady Michelle Obama in 1992 after meeting her in 1989 when they both worked at Chicago law firm Sidley Austin.
The notes also detail his struggles with his political philosophy, racial identity, and career ambitions.
“Salaries in the community organizations are too low to survive on right now, so I hope to work in some more conventional capacity for a year, allowing me to store up enough nuts to pursue those interests next,” Obama wrote in 1983.
Emory has had the “very lyrical, very poetic” letters — some of which were published in Obama’s memoirs — since 2014 but this is the first time they will be showcased at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, staff said.
