Obama Beat
A weekly gleaning of news reports about President Obama's vacation; where he will stay, what he will do and references to the Island (called Hollywood East, didn't you know) and Islanders that may surprise some.
It's official. Ending months of speculation, a White House spokesperson confirmed Friday that President Obama and his family will spend the last week of August vacationing on Martha's Vineyard.
"They've spent vacation time there before and are looking forward to relaxing together as a family at the end of a very busy summer. We'll have more details about the exact dates and location at a later date," the spokesperson said in an email to The Times.
The Times immediately posted the official confirmation on mvtimes.com. Other news outlet websites carried the same news followed by print editions the next day.
The Times also learned that the Obamas plan to stay at Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark.
•"Its official: The sandbox for the stars is once again becoming a presidential playground," reported the Boston Globe on Saturday under the headline, "Surf, sand and secret service, Obamas' Vineyard vacation a done deal."
•Off-Island news outlets had fixed on Oak Bluffs because of the town's long history as a vacation resort for affluent African Americans. But last week one Island resident with good connections told The Times the Obamas would stay at Blue Heron Farm, a private estate in Chilmark. News and rumor travel fast.
On Tuesday, under the headline, "Oprah may rock on with Obama," Boston Herald gossip columnists Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa reported, "Word on The Rock is that President Barack Obama's BFF Oprah Winfrey reportedly is trying to rent a massive estate in Katama on Martha's Vineyard for the last two weeks in August."
And reported the Herald, "Other scuttlebutt on the island is that the Secret Service has scoped out Blue Heron Farm in West Tisbury as a possible landing spot for the First Fam.
The estate, which sold for more than $20 million in 2005, boasts a completely renovated, 10,000-plus-square-foot historic farmhouse and more than 30 acres of privacy. Which would be a plus for presidential security." The Herald's geography is not as sharp as some of its more caustic headlines: Blue Heron Farm is in Chilmark.
Seasonal residents William J. and Mollie Van Devender of Mississippi own Blue Heron Farm. Mr. Van Devender, a professional investor, real estate developer and venture capitalist, is a partner in the Vineyard Golf Club and a well-known sportsman and conservationist.
•On Friday, under the headline, "Vineyard Security Plans Take Shape for President, The Vineyard Gazette reported, "The massive security effort required to accommodate a Vineyard vacation for President Obama and the First Family next month is now under way. As recession-stricken Island businesspeople fix their sights, with broadening smiles, on August."
But apparently, not every grinning Islander is going airborne. On Tuesday, under the headline, "Obama Air Space Curbs Worry Pilots," the Gazette reported, "For Mike Creato of Classic Aviators this is a crunch year and, while other business owners are jumping up and down about the next month's visit by President Obama, he's fretting over the possibility that the First Family's Island vacation will ruin his fragile biplane tours enterprise at Katama Airfield."
The story said that pilots are predicting increased security restrictions on airspace over and around the Vineyard.
Also Friday, in an editorial, "Mr. President: welcome to summer," the Gazette offered comforting words.
"Presidential visits always create a commotion whenever the President and the trailing White House entourage travel. But the Vineyard by now is comfortable with Presidents and First Families living in our midst as seasonal residents and good neighbors. We learned how to be good hosts during eight years of Vineyard visits by President Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea."
•The Associated Press (AP), in a piece published Tuesday in news outlets around the country, returned to the significance of the president's race. "When Barack Obama kicks off his flip-flops on the Martha's Vineyard sand next month, he'll be adding a modern note to the island's black history that stretches back three centuries," the AP reported.
"Decades ago, the island was a summer sanctuary for middle-class black families unwelcome elsewhere. Martin Luther King Jr. swam and wrote there.
"Centuries before that, Martha's Vineyard was home to blacks who defied the times to claim their place in island life."
The story described the history of African Americans on the Island and quoted local residents on the importance of the visit.
"There's so much pride. That (Obama) family is like our family," said Skip Finley in AP story, a radio executive and year-round Martha's Vineyard resident.
"To Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, a friend of the president and a regular summer visitor, coming to Martha's Vineyard is a chance to do yoga at Inkwell Beach, fry some fish or loaf around in sandals past the gingerbread cottages without worrying that his skin color means anything at all."
Bob Tankard, former West Tisbury School principal, spoke to the AP about when he first visited from New Jersey in the 1950s and met the kids of black doctors, lawyers and politicians. "When I came up for the summer of 1959, that was the first time that I had realized that blacks could be anything they wanted to be, other than an athlete and entertainer," Mr. Tankard told the AP.
"Obama will be the third sitting president to visit the island, following Ulysses S. Grant and Bill Clinton, and it's his third trip to Martha's Vineyard," the AP reported. "The island is buzzing about where he'll stay, the sights he'll see, the business he'll bring.
"But Ogletree said Obama is planning to make his mark on the island's black history without doing much of anything at all. 'He found it a place where he could rest, recharge his batteries,' he said. 'I think it's exactly why he'll come back again.'"
