Arizona

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President:  Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, William McKinley, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy

Start Point: Phoenix - 10km Walk (YR1204) Jan 1-Dec 31

Sponsoring Club:  AVA-0913, Saguaro Sun Striders

History Lesson:   Quoting from "A History of the Westward Ho" (a famous Phoenix landmark hotel on the National Register of Historic Places) -- John F. Kennedy stayed here in 1945 to recover from back injuries received when the Japanese destroyed the PT 109. Another time he stayed in a patio suite that included apartments 317 and 318. While running for president, he stayed in the presidential suite on the 11th floor. While President was here on November 17, 1961 to speak at a $100-a- plate dinner honoring Senator Carl D. Hayden for his 50 years in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate; Richard and Pat Nixon spent the first night of their honeymoon here; Harry Truman: Yablonsky (a Bell Captain) remembers: "I met him walking into the big suite on the 14th floor and, spotting a great big bouquet of flowers on the table (from a local bank), he took one look at the flowers and said 'I wonder what favors those s.o.b.'s want from me now'" At the Wyndham Hotel, also on the National Register of Historic Places, there is a plaque in the lobby which reads: The First Adams Hotel was built on this site in 1896 by J.C. Adams. A four- story, 200 room structure, the Adams became the meeting place of Arizona. Host to three U.S. Presidents (Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, William McKinley),it burned to the ground in 1910, and was immediately rebuilt. The second Adams Hotel was often referred to as the "Second Capitol" of Arizona, where more legislation was written than at the Capitol Building.

Updated August 21, 2006