Obama hails importance of family on Father's Day

Published on Saturday 20 June 2009 20:00

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama urged men to become better fathers than his own as he launched a series of events to mark Father's Day.

In what has now become something of a Father's Day ritual, Obama sought to promote fatherhood by revealing how he came to understand its importance from its absence in his young life.

In a question and answer session at the White House, he told audiences that he got little more than a basketball, his first name and his ambition from his father.

Barack Hussein Obama Sr, a Kenyan goat herder-turned-intellectual who clawed his way to scholarships and Harvard, left his family behind to get his schooling in the US, where he started another family. He then left his second wife and two-year-old Barack Jr to return to Africa with another woman.

After stints working for an oil company and the government, he fell into drink and died in a car crash when his son was 21 and a student at Columbia University.

"I don't want to be the kind of father I had," the president is quoted as telling a friend in a new book.

Obama is now appealing to men to be better fathers – reflecting years of worry about the fabric of black families and single mothers – but his message applies to everyone.

Meanwhile, British troops serving in the remotest parts of Afghanistan will receive Father's Day messages from their children within hours rather than weeks this year thanks to new technology.

Five "e-bluey" systems have been installed in isolated forward operating bases (FOBs) across Helmand Province, allowing families to send photos and greetings to their loved ones more quickly and easily than ever before.

Messages are sent electronically, then printed out in the FOB and delivered straight to the troops – by contrast, it can take weeks for hand-written letters to reach far-flung camps.

Bombardier Benjamin Stickland, from Tidworth, Hampshire, who is currently based in Musa Qala, said it was "particularly special" to keep in touch with his wife Stella and children Emily, six, Caleb, two, and Logan, 10 months, on occasions such as Father's Day.

"The introduction of the e-bluey system in the FOBs has made it so much easier to keep in touch with loved ones and that's the sort of thing that really raises morale when you're out on operations," he said.

Emily wrote in her Father's Day e-bluey message: "Dear Daddy, I miss you and can't wait to have you back. Lots of Love, Emily. xxxxx xxxxx."

The e-bluey system also allows troops on the frontline to write messages which are printed back in the UK within hours, sealed in an envelope and posted to their families.

Sergeant Dean Jackson-Smith, from Colchester, Essex, is the master chef with 2 Rifles Battle Group in FOB Jackson, based around the town of Sangin. He said receiving an e-bluey from his family – wife Lyndsey-Joanne, 25, and sons Louis, five, and Bobby, one – was "like being a kid and getting a birthday card with 10 in it".

"I'm really forward to getting home and doing normal dad things – taking them swimming and being a full-time dad again rather than a part-time one," he added.

Shelby Dawson, 14, from Middlesbrough, sent a Father's Day e-bluey to her stepfather, Bombardier Richard Lunn, of 40 Regiment Royal Artillery.

She said: "I send loads of them anyway. He sends them back as well – I think he likes to check up on me really! They're really easy to use, even my mum can use them."

Lunn, who is based at FOB Inkerman, near Sangin, said: "The e-bluey system feels more personal than just an e-mail and yet is still nearly as fast to receive and has the ability to have a picture of your loved ones attached that you can keep."

More than a million e-blueys have been sent in the past year, of which three-quarters went to troops on operations.

British service personnel deployed overseas still have access to the traditional "bluey", a free air mail letter so-called because of its colour.