The Lark: Vol 6, Issue 7, September 2026

My Dinner with President Nixon

By Robert McMahon

A week after graduation from Brown University in 1968, I signed up for a three-year stint in the US Navy. Upon completion of Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Newport in April 1969, I naively requested duty in Newport, Quonset Point, or Boston. I learned quickly that the Defense Department is very much a top-down organization, especially for freshly minted officers. My first tour of duty would be as a communications officer aboard the USS Arlington, AGMR-2, in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam, a mere 9,000 miles and 12 time zones from Providence.

The Arlington was a unique Navy vessel. It was a former World War II aircraft carrier that was converted in the1960’s into a floating Navy communications station. Antennas of every shape – transmitters and receivers – were installed on the re-purposed USS Saipan carrier deck. In the 1960’s satellite technology was still in its infancy. The Arlington allowed the Navy to easily accommodate communications off the coast of Vietnam to distant land-based Navy installations throughout the Pacific.

The Arlington had a crew of almost 1,000 men, including about 50 officers. I was part of a small group of officers and enlisted men responsible for operating encryption devices for out-going messages. The Arlington never slept. Thousands of messages were received, routed, and sent every day. The ship also had a slew of non-stop teletype machines, one of which handled US domestic news 24/7. While on duty on a 4 a.m. - 8 a.m. shift, I would often take a peek at major league baseball scores to see how the Red Sox did.

In early July 1969, the Arlington was notified by the Chief of the Pacific Fleet that our ship would sail to a location about 900 miles southwest of Hawaii to participate in the recovery of the Apollo 11 astronauts, who would be coming home after the first ever landing on the moon. The Arlington would provide additional communications support for the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, the recovery ship for the Apollo 11 astronauts.

As a 23-year-old Ensign, I was a bit overwhelmed thinking about being a part of this historic moment. Prior to the Navy, my previous mariner experience was riding in a friends’ quahog skiff from East Greenwich to Rocky Point for clam cakes on Sunday afternoons.

On July 23, 1969, the day before the Apollo astronauts were scheduled to land in the Pacific Ocean, Captain Murphree of the Arlington announced over the PA system that President Richard Nixon would be staying overnight on the Arlington. The President and his entourage landed by plane on the nearby Hornet and were ferried by helicopter to our ship. Unfortunately, I was on duty when Nixon landed on our ship, so I thought that the moment to see the President was gone. Nixon and our Captain would likely be eating dinner in the Captain’s quarters.

At dinner that evening in the officer’s dining area, known in Navy lingo as the “wardroom,” the initial conversation at my table with other junior officers centered around who had seen Nixon’s landing on the ship, who was in his entourage (Secretary of State Kissinger was), and why the President was staying aboard our ship instead of the Hornet (to avoid a very large press corps on the Hornet).

Just as I was about to take my first bite of chicken and mashed potatoes, President Nixon strides into the wardroom! We all stand and provide polite applause. He motions us to sit, and he talks about his appreciation for our service and for our role in recovering the Apollo 11 astronauts. He then proceeds to join a table of senior officers on the other side of the wardroom for a few minutes and continues stopping at other tables.

At my table of junior officers, there was one empty seat—across from me. No way, Nixon is going to sit at this table full of “junior woodchucks.” But yup, he meanders over to our table, and suddenly, the President of the United States is sitting across from me.
He chats to the seven of us at the table about our good fortune to be a part of this historic moment recovering the first astronauts to land on the moon. I’m hoping he doesn’t quiz us about whether we voted for him in the 1968 Presidential election before he leaves our table. Fortunately, he didn’t, but his eyes wander over to me, looks at my name tag, and he asks, “So Ensign McMahon, where are you from?”

I immediately lapse into a brain fog, but manage to utter, “Um ah, I’m from Rhode Island…ah, from a small town, East Greenwich.” He tips his head a little and a smile appears on his face. “Yeah, I began my Navy career in 1942 at Quonset Point Naval Air Station, and I’m pretty sure I made a couple of stops in East Greenwich watering holes while at Quonset.” He then recounts the rest of his duty stations during World War II and mentions that he was in the Naval Reserve until 1966 and left as a Commander. Finally, as he is getting up to leave, he asks, “McMahon, do they still make Quonset huts at Quonset Point?” I was pretty sure that they didn’t, but I assured him that they did.

After he leaves the wardroom, my colleagues at my table offer lots of remarks, “Holy Sxxt McMahon, the President talked with you…do you know what bars in your hometown he might have visited…what the hell is a Quonset hut…?”

The next morning, I didn’t have duty at my communications station. I was able to join several hundred other Arlington crew members on the deck when astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins came into view in the early morning hours, nestled in the command module attached to giant parachutes. Navy divers turned the module over in the gentle accommodating Pacific Ocean and lifted each astronaut out of the capsule into rope slings lowered down by helicopters for the ride to the Hornet. There, they were eventually greeted by President Nixon.

I have often reflected on my Apollo 11 recovery moment and my brief encounter with President Nixon. Each time, I have also wistfully reflected on President John F. Kennedy’s call to Congress in 1961, when I was just a freshman in high school, when he proposed that “the United States should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” Kennedy, of course, never lived to witness the success of one of his boldest aspirational goals.

Nixon, only seven months into his presidency, was in the right place at the right time to bask in the glory of one of the United States’ greatest achievements of the Twentieth Century. And he also got to chat with Ensign McMahon about Quonset huts.