On my early morning walk.
Did you know?:
"John F. Kennedy is probably the only president to visit Benson, Arizona, and not get too much
attention for it. There is a reason for that, of course. He was just a teenager, and no one knew
how famous he would become. It all started with another health seeker, John G. F. Speiden. Speiden,
a Cornell graduate who also studied in London, gave up career as a Wall Street banker in 1932 to
recuperate in Arizona’s healthy climate. He soon got a reputation as a gracious host to such
celebrities as Thornton Wilder.

JFK had been studying at the London School of Economics but got sick and had to come home. His
parents worried about his health. A journalist friend who knew Speiden suggest to Joe Kennedy that
his sons Jack and Joe Jr. could benefit from a working vacation on Speiden’s J-Six Ranch west of
Benson, Arizona. Jack planned to join his older brother at Harvard, and hearty ranch life could get
them both into shape for the fall athletic season.

During the spring and summer of 1936, the brothers rode fence, herded cattle, and helped put up an
adobe office for their host. Speiden liked to call it, “the house that Jack built.” Jack may have
had some fireside economics conversations with Speiden, and he must have heard some great wrangler
tales from Oklahoma Pete Haverty, the popular one-legged cowboy. The ranch cure must have worked
its wonders: there were two Kennedys on the Harvard football roster that fall."
By Jim Turner, Historian