The following item is part of a series in which we corner people at the 2009 Hawaii State Society Inaugural Ball and ask them, “So, what’s your connection with the president?”

Richard Turbin is a proud Hawaiian. He served in 2005 as the president of the Hawaii State Bar Association, which makes him a lawyer.

But being a lawyer of high standing in the Aloha state is not the credential that Turbin is strutting on this inauguration evening. That credential would be the following:

Back in the ’70s, when Turbin got married, Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama, came to his bachelor party. The invite to the senior Obama came not from Turbin himself, but from one of Turbin’s friends. As for the bachelor party itself, “It was wild. It was crazy. I was totally out of it, as you can imagine,” says Turbin.

Reporting by Ruth Samuelson, writing by Erik Wemple