JFK Was an Arizona Cowboy
John F. Kennedy, 35th president of the United States, is the most famous health seeker ever to spend time in Arizona and yet very few people know he was here. He was in England in 1935, eighteen years old and about to enter the London School of Economics when he fell gravely ill with Addison’s Disease. His father mentioned his son’s illness to renowned editor Arthur Brisbane who recommended Jack Speiden’s Jay Six Ranch near Benson, Arizona.
Speiden was a Wall Street stockbroker who lost his money and his health in the big stock market crash of 1929. He met Brisbane in 1933 and the editor told him go to Arizona for his health and get into ranching for his economic recovery. It worked on both counts, and Speiden was happy to host both young Jack and his older brother, Joe Jr., for a working vacation in the spring and summer of 1936.
The Kennedy brothers rode fence, herded cattle, and helped construct an adobe office building for their host. Speiden liked to call it “the house that Jack built.” Jack Kennedy may have had some fireside economics conversations with Speiden and he must have heard some great wrangler tales from “Oklahoma Pete” Haverty, the renowned rodeo star and well-liked one-legged cowboy. The ranch cure must have worked its wonders because there were two Kennedys on the Harvard football team roster in the fall of 1936.
JFK must have remembered that Arizona summer nine years later when someone else suggested that he return to Arizona for his health. A back injury he received at Harvard kept him out of the Army, but he managed to get into the Navy. Lieutenant John F. Kennedy reinjured his back when a Japanese destroyer rammed the PT 109 in August, 1942.
This time the recovery location was a resort sixty miles north of Phoenix called Castle Hot Springs. The facility was closed for the duration of the war until the Army Air Corps leased it to let pilots recuperate there. Jack was allowed to join the recovering pilots. Built in 1896, the hot springs was the first and foremost health spa in Arizona. High society names like Astor, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt filled the guest book.
The springs and warm weather worked their wonders, and 28-year-old Jack was soon bored with the remote location. He tried the famous Arizona Baltimore Hotel in Phoenix, but found it too staid and reserved. Eventually he settled into a little family-owned spot in Scottsdale known as the Camelback Inn.