The President 's trips to Walkers Cay and Grand Cay in the Bahamas (1972-1973)-revised

Walkers Cay, Bahamas Past History
Walkers Cay Club (1972)
Type of Activity	Communications Support Trips
Location
Location	Bahama Islands
Date of Activity	Various
Coordinates	27°15′27.8″N 78°23′40.7″W

Robert Abplanalp purchased the lease for Walker's Cay in 1968, and continued the island's development as a sport fishing destination, while also cautiously eyeing the impact on conservation in the waters surrounding it. Abplanalp also took steps to protect the marine life around Walker's Cay. He was a pioneer of tag-and-release fishing, and he worked with the Bahamian government to establish a marine reserve around the island. Over the next three decades, Walkers Cay became the hub for sport fishing in the northern Bahamas.

Abplanalp was a close friend and supporter of President Richard Nixon, Grand Cay became a popular destination for Nixon and his friend Bebe Rebozo. Grand Cay was a nearby private island that Abplanalp owned and was available to the President anytime he decided to visit.

Walkers Cay Club, Bahamas (note radio antenna), WHCA maintained UHF system

I thought Walkers Cay was a true "Paradise" and only a short 90 minutes by helicopter to be in a different world. The Key Biscayne Detachment of WHCA was responsible for maintaining the radio system that connected the Florida White House to Walkers Cay and Grand Cay providing communications whenever President Nixon vacationed at this private retreat on Grand Cay. Robert Abplanalp was a close friend of President Nixon, and owned both Walkers Cay Club, and Grand Cay.

The Walkers Cay Club, and Marina was a popular fishing resort,  particularly known as a location for billfishing, with huge Atlantic blue marlin caught in the area; angling for bonefish was also popular there. Walker's Cay was also known for its annual billfish tournaments that were held there, Walkers Cay Billfish Tournaments attracted some of the best anglers in the world, During Abplanalp's ownership, Walker's Cay became a world-renowned destination for sport fishing and marine conservation.   

 It was a very exclusive resort as the only way to reach the island was either by boat or by air. Walker's Cay Club had a 75-slip fully equipped marina complete with bait, tackle, and snack shop supplying guests with anything they needed. The island's hotel, marina, and airstrip were all upgraded.

 The island's airstrip is suitable only for light aircraft. The resort had regularly scheduled flights from Ft Lauderdale, Fl. by Grumman Mallard Sea Plane. Travel by WHCA to the island was generally by helicopter.  

Guests would arrive on a  Grumman Mallard Sea Plane 

Ariel view of the Hotel, swimming pools, Marina, Chapel, and Guest villas

We would travel to the Walkers Cay to perform monthly maintenance on all of the communication equipment on the island.

Walkers Cay Marina (1973)

A Guest villa at The Walkers Cay Club

The Sea Lion docked at the Marina in 1973

There were several villas available besides the Hotel for guests to stay and a small chapel for use while visiting the island.

The Islands Chapel  in 1973

We would stay at the Walkers Cay Hotel, eat, and drink for a week all with the complements of our host Robert Abplanalp, the NY industrialist who owned Precision Valve Corporation (PVC), makers of the aerosol tip on deodorant, canned paint, bug spray, and just about every aerosol can in your household in the 1970's, and owner of the island. He had a memo to all the staff, that the Military visiting the island were to never be charged for ANYTHING or their employment would be terminated!

The relatively small hotel was nothing fancy, but most people were not looking for a luxury hotel, just a place to sleep and take a shower between marathon fishing. The decor in the rooms, hotel lobby, and marina was all very rustic with a Bahamian flare, and often had a dirty appearance with sand on floors in hotel rooms and the carpeted areas were very worn and lots of sand. The light switches and cover plates were all a hodge podge and didn’t match, some installed upside down. We were aware of the need for proper grounding on our equipment and would use a multimeter to look inside the switch plates to ensure that everything was normal. We would have to crawl under a deck, and open the box and see the grounding wires connected to the next box which was linked with plastic PVC pipe instead of metal conduit for traditional conduction. All of the A/C was individual through the wall window type units, and they were not efficient or reliable. The unsteady generator power and frequent surges was not friendly with the A/C units. The units that were working would also often leak condensation all over the room.

The hotel’s outside bar and pool area (1973)

The hotels fresh and salt water pool area adjacent to the hotels outside bar

The hotel also housed the resorts bar, restaurant and two swimming pools, one fresh water and one salt water. There were several buildings where the staff lived while on the island. The island had its own power plant and desalinization station for all drinking water.

The Walkers Cay experience was always a great one . Hard work during a Presidential visit, but there were a lot of rewards during our maintenance visits. We are out there living the life eating lobster and fresh seafood, while the hotel bar served the best conch fritters with cocktail sauce in the world!

What "Flavour" of drink would I order? No, I didn't spell it wrong. Flavour was the hotel’s bartender, and he made awesome "mega hot" Bloody Mary’s. He also made great Yellow Birds, and Planters Punch, then "GOOD NIGHT" lights OUT! Next to the bar was a game room equipped with a regulation pool table and a bumper pool table. There were some pretty competitive games with the loser buying the next round of drinks (all drinks were free), which meant they had to walk to the bar and bring the drinks back. I was the uncontested champion of the bumper pool table because I never lost a game! Adjacent to the game room there was the card room, We spent many evenings playing pool or playing poker or hearts to pass the time since there was limited television or other forms of entertainment. There was a lot of Per Diem won and lost during our stay. Then after drinking and playing cards until the wee hours in the morning, we had to either get up to go to work or get ready to go back to Key Biscayne.

I remember when Dave Dersham arrived at Key Biscayne just out of school and new to WHCA, We broke him in as we did all new radio guys a trip to Walkers Cay to introduce him to the most unique UHF radio system in the world! LOL. After working 24 straight hours re-wiring the radio room, I sent Dave back to Key Biscayne while Chuck Rasmussen and I stayed behind to finish up and completed testing the radio equipment. Dave and I worked together until I was discharged in 1974. Our Walkers Cay’s Club membership of the Key Biscayne Detachments personnel that maintained the communication equipment is getting smaller each year. Probably only about 6 of us left.

When we called Homestead AFB with an updated weather report for a chopper to pick us up. We always exaggerated the weather conditions and tell them tell them high winds, low visibility, and getting worse by the minute. If they would cancel our scheduled evacuation on Friday afternoon, then we were committed to stay through the weekend, they also could never support a mission on Mondays. If you could convince them NOT to fly on Friday, you would have 4 full days of down time.

The Grumman Mallard Sea Plane brought paying customers from Ft Lauderdale to the island on a daily basis and many of us used that as backup when space was available, but we never really begged to get off if we had the chance.

Some of my most memorable moments in all my years in WHCA took place at Walkers Cay and Grand Cay.

UHF Radio System to the Bahamas

Prior to 1969 there was little or no communications on Walkers Cay or Grand Cay. There was a low power radio at the Walkers Cay Club that they used to communicate to their office in Ft. Lauderdale, and for emergencies. There was nothing on Grand Cay!

The Radio Tower viewed from offshore from Walkers Cay (1973)

The Key Biscayne Detachment was responsible for the installation and maintenance of the radio system which included an 8 Channel Cardion UHF link between Grand Bahama Island (GBI), and Walkers Cay, and then an Army GRC-103 12 channel between Walkers Cay and Grand Cay. 

UHF Radio system from GBI to Walkers Cay to Grand Cay

AT&T provided the voice circuits from Key Biscayne to a NASA submarine cable that terminated at a down range missile tracking station on GBI. This location was used for tracking launches from Cape Canaveral. WHCA used an existing radio tower to install a Farinon UHF radio system on the Air Force facility. GBI shot directly to Walkers Cay where the circuits terminated. All of this was interfaced at GBI to the NASA undersea cable. This system was very labor intensive due to saltwater corrosion from the air.

On Walkers Cay there were telephones installed in the Walkers Cay Club’s office and several of the hotel rooms where supporting staff would stay during all Presidential trips and of course all of the WHCA areas. The radios were located in a building adjacent to the 125 ft. tower, FM base stations were also installed for any necessary communications for WHCA, Secret Service, or the White House Staff staying on the island, and in a separate building near the radio room housed a small switchboard and communications center for TTY and fax messages.

There was a secure voice circuit installed that went to the Key Biscayne Commcenter but there was nothing, but voice circuits installed on Grand Cay. Voice circuits were also installed in the communication center for any DEX-1(facsimile) and TTY traffic.

We would travel to Walkers Cay from Homestead AFB each month for maintenance trips. A typical Walkers Cay maintenance visit was launched by a USAF helicopter from Homestead AFB, first stop was Grand Bahama Island AF Station to refuel because the helicopter did not have enough to reach Walkers Cay and return safely.

When refueling was complete we would take off and the pilot would fly at tree top level and curve the coastline before we headed to Walkers Cay. Many sunbathers did not have a chance to grab their towels and tops as they blew down to the beach. We did this routinely for at least two years before the Commander at the GBI USAF Station sent a memo to Homestead AFB flight group. This was always fun until on one flight as we were enjoying the view, the helicopter suddenly raised its nose sharply. None of us knew what happened until we landed at Walkers and the pilot told us that to avoid a direct bird strike, he quickly reacted causing a glancing blow instead of a direct hit, and he “didn’t want to be picking bird feathers out of his teeth”.

The same group of USAF pilots, all were combat veterans who had served in Vietnam and did some strange things on our flights. They would use a grappling hook with bait and go trolling for sharks. Feeling a 300 lb. shark shaking on a nylon rope below the helicopter was an experience, but often wondered how they would have explained if they went down in the shark infested waters. On one return flight while landing at Homestead AFB instead of the usual vertical landing the Pilot decided to land like a fixed wing aircraft on the Huey’s skids. I was told that this is a routine training exercise. In 1973 we expanded the radio system I remember building and installing a GRC-103 UHF radio system between Walkers Cay and Grand Cay. Mario Lilla who was also the father of the WHCA mini board, engineered the interface that we installed the systems at Walkers Cay and Grand Cay. The voice channels used Quindar Ringers, numerous relays, 4W to 2W conversions, interfacing the GRC-103 Radios with a Farinon UHF Radio Carrier to Grand Bahama Island where it was connected to AT&T submarine cable to Key Biscayne. We built and tested the interface and radio system at the CCT shop at Homestead AFB before going to the Bahamas to install it.

While we were on Grand Cay, we also buried a 50 pr cable from the radio room to the bunkhouse and both villas to install new phones and any future requirements.

The GRC-103 UHF Radio system used from GBI to Walkers Cay and Grand Cay Islands

The final leg of the was a GRC 103 UHF radio system, with a TD 660 multiplexer providing 24 voice circuits between Walkers Cay and terminating on Grand Cay. Telephones were installed in the Main residence and both villas, as well as the bunkhouse on the island. The USSS CP also had phones installed and FM Radio Consoles on Baker and Charlie frequencies. All equipment, tools, and personnel had to be sent in on helicopters from Homestead AFB.

We would usually leave Homestead on Monday or Tuesday with a return scheduled for Friday afternoon, normally about 2pm. Some of the USAF chopper pilots enjoyed coming early and enjoying lunch at the hotel.

The monthly maintenance trips to Walkers Cay were like paid vacations, we would be choppered over from Homestead, We would spend two or three days doing PM's on Walkers and traveling over to Grand Cay by boat. Plus, we would of course have to man all locations during any official trips. We also had a UHF system between Freeport on GBI to Walkers Cay which meant side trips to the Casino in Freeport.

Ariel view of Grand Cay (1973)

We honestly did do some work during some of these trips.  I never had any problem finding volunteers to help me on maintenance trips.

Most of the maintenance was accelerated due to salt air corrosion and many of the non-maintenance folks enjoyed being able to help with the grunt labor part of changing out and upgrading various systems.

4 May 1973 on Walkers Cay to support the President’s visit to Grand Cay

All of the WHCA support personnel would stay on Walkers Cay during the Presidential Trips except for one radio tech that would go to Grand Cay and one radio tech would stay at GBI.  Although I visited Walkers over 20 times to perform maintenance on the radio equipment and Switchboard, I only participated in this one actual visit at Walkers Cay. I was the only Radioman at Walkers so I was assigned a pager and and hung out at the hotel waiting for some thing to stop working.

My activities for the three days that the trip lasted consisted of eating, drinking, playing pool and playing shuffleboard, OK, I also slept. I do regret not being a fisherman, as I would have loved to experience the world-class fishing at Walker's Cay.

During every Presidential visit to Grand Cay, WHCA, the White House staff and the White House Press Corp would stay on Walker’s Cay. Helen Thomas, the Dean of the White House Press Corp who was in that position for what seemed like forever. During the Nixon years, she would have already been a woman in her late 40's or early 50's. On the trips to the Bahamas, she would lead the Press Pool and stay in the hotel on Walkers Cay, some 7 miles from Grand Cay where President Nixon, Robert Abplanalp, and Bebe Rebozo would relax on the beach.

The WHCA Commcenter would actually file her stories and transmit them back to the Press Center, but her access to actual news was limited to whatever the Military Aide would feed her.

Now, the ugly! Helen Thomas routinely relaxed beside the pool at the Walkers Cay Hotel. This woman should NEVER have been a candidate for a two-piece bathing suit at any age! The image was  enough to permanently burn the retina of your eyes! All that being said, she did keep the other correspondents in check and establish some rules of engagement, although she could be as rough as any of them, especially during Watergate.

WHCA personnel were given instructions on the route between the various coral rocks to make the 7 mile trip to Grand Cay via a small 13 ft Boston Whaler. For two to three of us to head out on a maintenance trip was very common, but for the Commcenter, they would go solo during TTY message delivery during visits. It was a major short coming because the Commcenter was located at Walkers Cay, and the President located across open water about 7 miles and sometime as much as 45 minutes away on Grand Cay.

When the President departed, we boarded an USAF helicopter and headed back to Crandon Park on Key Biscayne with stops at Grand Cay, and GBI where we picked up other WHCA personnel.

 I still think the undertaking of installing permanent Communications to support both Walkers Cay and Grand Cay in the Bahamas was one of the most challenging efforts of WHCA over the years. It was a very elaborate set up and at the same time a Rube Goldberg design.

Note:  Walkers Cay Club was severely damaged in 2004 by two hurricanes

Walkers Cay Island in the Bahamas

Walkers Cay Club after 2004 hurricane

Walkers Cay Club after 2004 hurricane season

Unfortunately the Walkers Cay Club was heavily damaged by several hurricane and was closed down, the island and all of the facilities were, but in 2019 Walkers Cay was sold, renovated and the Marina re-opened as of 2022.

President Nixon visited Key Biscayne more than 50 times this also included several visits to Grand Cay between 1969 and 1974 when he resigned from office. After his resignation all of the Communications equipment was removed from GBI, Walkers Cay and Grand Cay.

After the death of Robert Abplanalp in 2003, the fortunes of Walker's Cay took a further turn for the worse when it was hit by two hurricanes in 2004, (Frances and Jeanne), which caused extensive damage. However, in 2005, the Abplanalp family decided to sell the island, marking the end of a 50 year era.

The island went through subsequent ownership changes, but its legacy as a top-tier fishing destination persisted. Additionally, a decline in tourism and changing travel patterns led to its gradual decline becoming a ghost town for fourteen years, with crumbling infrastructure and dilapidated facilities. Until in 2018 Walker's Cay was purchased by Texas businessman Carl Allen, who has begun the process of restoring the island it to its former glory.

Legacy of Robert Abplanalp's ownership of Walker's Cay

Robert Abplanalp's ownership of Walker's Cay had a significant impact on the island and the surrounding waters. He developed Walker's into a world-renowned destination for sport fishing and marine conservation. He also helped to promote tourism to the Bahamas and to create jobs on the island.

His ownership of Walker's Cay spanned several decades, during which the island thrived as a haven for the wealthy and fishing enthusiasts. However, in 2005, the Abplanalp family decided to sell the island, marking the end of an era. The island went through subsequent ownership changes, but its legacy as a top-tier fishing destination persisted.

Abplanalp's legacy is still felt today. Walker's Cay is still a popular destination for sport fishing and tourism, and the marine reserve that he helped to establish continues to protect the marine life around the island.

Walker's Cay continues to draw visitors from around the world, offering them the chance to experience the same pristine beauty and world-class fishing that attracted Robert Abplanalp and his distinguished guests. The island remains a testament to the vision of a man who transformed a secluded paradise into an exclusive retreat, leaving an indelible mark on the history of Walker's Cay.

The New Walkers Cay

Walkers Cay current Logo (2023) 

Marina Entrance (2023 pictured Don and Becky Cammel)

Philanthropist and marlin fishing enthusiast Carl Allen purchased Walker's Cay in 2018 with a vision to restore it to its former glory. Allen is the founder of Allen Exploration, a company that specializes in underwater exploration and research. He is also a passionate advocate for marine conservation. Since purchasing, Carl Allen, has begun the process of restoring Walkers Cay. There are plans for redevelopment and modernization, aiming to position the island as a premier tourist destination once again. Sustainable development initiatives are being implemented to preserve the natural beauty and ecological balance of the island.

Walkers Cay (2023)

The restored Marina at Walkers Cay Island in the Bahamas (2023)

Allen's restoration of Walker's Cay is already having a positive impact. The decaying infrastructure on the island was entirely revitalized. The island's marina has been fully restored and there has already been two billfish tournaments conducted with a third scheduled for Memorial Day weekend 2024. The Airstrip has been extended and modernized, the 2,500-foot-long (760 m) runway is now suitable for light aircraft.

The Chapel on Walkers Cay under construction (2022)

The Chapel on Walkers Cay under construction (2022)

The Islands chapel has also been restored with the wood carvings of Joseph and Mary that were on each side of the entrance door of the old chapel survived, have been saved, restored, and are on display inside the new chapel.

Walkers Cay’s restored chapel (2023)

Walkers Cay’s restored chapel (2023)

Today, there are only a few structures that have been completed. The new chapel is beautiful, and the “Welcome House” for Customs is a very nice looking building just off the runway.

A new resort is scheduled to open in 2023 or 2024 and Allen has hired a team of local residents to work on all of these projects thus creating jobs and economic opportunities for the people of Walker's Cay. He is working with local residents to develop a sustainable fishing industry and to create new tourism attractions. Allen is also investing in education and training programs for local residents.

Carl Allen's dedication to Walker's Cay has borne fruit. The island is once again becoming a destination of choice for travelers seeking adventure, relaxation, and natural beauty. It's a testament to what can be achieved through a combination of entrepreneurship, conservation, and a deep respect for the environment.

Walker's Cay will not only be a thriving resort but also an eco-friendly destination that upholds responsible tourism. Its restoration serves as a model for sustainable tourism. The island will be powered by renewable energy, and all wastewater will be treated on-site. Allen is also working to restore the island's natural ecosystems, including its mangroves and seagrass beds.

The restoration of Walker's Cay, led by Carl Allen, is a remarkable story of vision, dedication, and environmental stewardship. It demonstrates that even the most challenging restoration projects can succeed with the right mix of passion and commitment. Today, Walker's Cay stands as a testament to the enduring beauty of the Bahamas and the resilience of nature, welcoming visitors from around the world to experience its rejuvenated splendor.

I would like to thank CWO Don Cammel, US Army Ret. for his narrative and photos that I used in this article about Walkers Cay as it is today.