Thenjfk the fucking president took up the 50 mile walkchallenge. With his bro. Did a 50 mike trek w bobby.
It started a walking craze in anerica.
We are so fucking lame, pathetic.
The Fifty-Mile Hike
Kennedy’s success was not just a matter of bureaucratic changes. Unlike his predecessor, Kennedy addressed the issue of physical fitness frequently in his public pronouncements and assigned new projects to the council. Perhaps his most famous intervention in the area of fitness was the fifty-mile hike. In late 1962, President Kennedy discovered an executive order from Theodore Roosevelt challenging US Marine officers to finish fifty miles in twenty hours. Kennedy passed the document to Marine General David M. Shoup. The president suggested that Shoup bring it up as his own discovery and challenge modern day Marines to duplicate this feat. Kennedy went on to say that:
Should your report to me indicate that the strength and stamina of the modern Marine is at least equivalent to that of his antecedents, I will then ask Mr. Salinger to look into the matter personally and give me a report on the fitness of the White House Staff.
In conversations with his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, Kennedy left no doubt that “look[ing] into the matter personally” would involve Salinger walking fifty miles himself. A well-padded individual with a sense of humor, Salinger turned his efforts to avoid the hike into an open joke. He finally released a statement on February 12, 1963, in which he publicly declined the honor. Attorney General Robert Kennedy undertook the hike, clad in leather oxford shoes, and completed the full distance through snow and slush. Salinger pointed to him as proof of the administration’s fitness.
But the real impact of the fifty-mile hike was with the public at large. Many Americans took the hike as a challenge from their president. The Kennedy council capitalized on this enthusiasm with a national publicity campaign on physical fitness. The campaign was organized, extensive, media-savvy, and above all, countrywide. Material was produced for print, radio, television, and display advertising. For broadcast alone, 650 television kits and 3,500 radio kits were sent out. All of this was in addition to the continued encouragement through public relations outlets. The physical fitness theme even appeared in the comics page, as seventeen major syndicated cartoonists took up the subject, including Charles Schulz of “Peanuts” fame.
