President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife Mamie wave goodbye from their plane at the Quonset Point Naval Air Station in September, 1958, after a 25-day Newport vacation.
Providence journal files
In 1790, Brown University bestowed an honorary degree on President George Washington, who before his election to the presidency had traveled the state extensively, before and during the Revolutionary War. President John Adams was so honored in 1797.
Rhode Island experienced Abraham Lincoln’s presence three times, but he had not yet been elected president.
But President Ulysses S. Grant visited Rhode Island in 1869, in the days before the hoopla that accompanies such state occasions today. Grant was accompanied only by his wife, his son and daughter, and a private secretary.
President Chester A. Arthur visited Newport in the early 1880s, one of a number of presidents to make their way to the City by the Sea.
While the United States was gearing up for entry into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived under cover of darkness on Aug. 12, 1940 aboard his yacht, the Potomac. Traveling in an open touring car, he checked out the officers’ quarters on Goat Island, and peered through torpedo-plant windows. He inspected one of the latest torpedoes and had a look at moored warships.
Roosevelt motored across the brand-new Jamestown Bridge to visit the brand-new Quonset Point naval air base. Re-boarding the Potomac, it was on to New London, where he inspected the Electric Boat Co. plant. He was told that Electric Boat would turn out a submarine each month.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower established his Summer White House at Fort Adams in Newport, just over the wall from the 10th green at the Newport Country Club. According to his presidential papers, Eisenhower played at Newport 20 times in September of 1957 and 14 more rounds in September of 1958.
But he did more than play golf there. At the Summer White House, Eisenhower conferred with Gov. Orval E. Faubus of Arkansas in September 1957 on the crisis over integrating public schools in Little Rock, then issued an executive order forbidding the Arkansas National Guard to block black children from attending Little Rock High School.
On Sept. 26, Eisenhower boarded the nuclear-powered submarine Sea Wolf, which submerged to periscope depth five miles southwest of Newport’s Brenton Reef. He was the first president to ride a nuclear submarine.
John F. Kennedy may have spent more time in Rhode Island than any other individual elected to the White House.
He was stationed at the Newport Naval Base during World War II, learning how to handle the PT boats that operated out of Melville and would later play a role in the war in the Pacific.
He and Jacqueline Bouvier were married in 1953 in St. Mary Church, Newport. On several occasions, they visited Newport’s Hammersmith Farm, home of Jacqueline Kennedy’s stepfather and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss, which became Kennedy’s own Summer White House. They had held their wedding reception there.
On Sept. 28, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson arrived in Rhode Island to greet a throng of up to 150,000. He arrived at Hillsgrove state airport and walked nearly a mile along Occupasstuxet Road — now Airport Road — and Post Road in Warwick, shaking hundreds of hands.
He was in Rhode Island to speak at the 200th anniversary celebration of the founding of Brown University. It was the first visit to Brown by an incumbent president since John Adams, 167 years earlier.
Johnson also visited Rhode Island in 1966 to receive an honorary degree from the University of Rhode Island.
Richard Nixon visited the Newport Naval Base in March 1971 to attend the graduation of his son-in-law, Ensign David Eisenhower, from Officer Candidate School. During World War II, Nixon had been a naval officer assigned for a time to Quonset Point.
Nixon again visited Rhode Island on Nov. 3, 1972, when he talked about the Paris peace talks to end the Vietnam War, and urged Rhode Islanders to elect John H. Chafee to the U.S. Senate. Rhode Island chose to reelect Sen. Claiborne Pell instead. Chafee was eventually elected in 1976.
President Gerald R. Ford visited Rhode Island on July 10, 1976, where he was a guest of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain aboard the royal yacht Britannia in Newport Harbor.
President Jimmy Carter visited Rhode Island for a day on Oct. 29, 1979 for a reception at the Cranston Hilton Hotel as a prelude to the Democratic primary election of 1980. He also visited on Feb. 17, 1979, and Feb. 18, 1978.
President Bill Clinton held a TV “town meeting” at the Cranston studio of Channel 10 in May of 1994, and visited the Portuguese Social Club in Pawtucket and the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence on Nov. 2 of the same year to urge the election of Democratic candidates, especially Patrick J. Kennedy to the U.S. House. This time, Rhode Island heeded a president’s political advice.
Clinton returned for more politicking in September of 1996, and for Sen. John Chafee’s funeral in October 1999.
Rhode Island’s most recent presidential visit came on June 28, 2007, when George W. Bush came to the Naval War College in Newport to discuss terrorism. He urged Americans to give the newly crafted “surge” strategy in Iraq, which would bring thousands of new U.S. troops to the country, a chance.
“It’s a well-conceived plan by smart military people,” said Mr. Bush. “And we owe them the time, and we owe them the support they need to succeed.”
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