Events and Secret Service agents conspired to keep President Obama largely distant from Islanders this week, though a few found themselves up close, or at least close enough to snap their own photos.

“It was a very close encounter,” said former year-round resident Tom Murro, who was visiting this week from his New Jersey home when he found himself shaking hands with Mr. Obama on Monday.

Mr. Murro was having lunch with his 10-year-old daughter, Lauren, at Farm Neck Cafe when the agents swept in, but hours later, the Murros returned to the golf course as he heard the President was coming around on the 14th hole. There he saw film director Spike Lee, and joked, “So you have to sit here like the rest of us?”

Their conversation fell into talk of a mutual friend, and the Murro father and daughter followed Mr. Lee and his wife, Tonya, to their home on the 18th hole.

Tom Murro
where her father, Tom Murro, can call him Barack.

“Then I heard the President yell out, ‘Hey, Spike, I see you have your own entourage,’” recalled Mr. Murro. “Then he hopped off the cart — I almost passed out when he did that — and, started walking toward us. He gave Spike a big hug, and Spike introduced his family, and I introduced myself and said ‘It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. President,’ and he said, ‘My name’s Barack.’

“I was floored when he did that.”

“He hung around and took quite a few pictures,” said Mr. Murro, who said even the ever-cool Mr. Lee seemed “thrilled to death.”

“A regular guy can get himself near the President!” Mr. Murro said. “I wasn’t hoping to shake his hand or meet him like that, you can only dream of that, considering how hard it is to even see him, other than people who are friends with him.”

Longtime seasonal visitor and Oak Bluffs homeowner Linda Gaines was on her way to South Beach when she noticed a crowd near the golf course that day. Nearly four hours later, she had not made it the beach, but she had made friends with several photojournalists and residents, snapped her own photo and satisfied herself that the President was enjoying the Island she loves so much.

Linda Gaines
Linda Gaines enjoys long wait with new friends.

“We don’t get to welcome him into our home, so I wanted to see for myself that he was relaxing,” she said. In a bright pink dress that blew any chance of paparazzi cover, she brandished her pink phone and pink camera and framed the First Golfer neatly between two trees as he strode down the fairway.

“The whole thing was all about the Island spirit,” she said, still smiling the next day.

And Fritz Blaicher, an Edgartown seasonal resident, was driving up to Vineyard Golf Club yesterday to make his tee time when he saw the convoy of cars with tinted windows. “I guess the President’s playing today,” he said to his wife. The couple, who are club members, found themselves playing just behind the President’s party. “They played pretty fast for a foursome,” he said.