Peter wanted to be a writer. His father, Nathaniel, was an author. His grandfather Robert was a humorist and co-founder of the Algonquin Round Table, an informal group of writers, critics, and actors who met for daily lunches at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. Writing seemed to be in Peter’s genetic makeup.
After earning a degree in English from Harvard in June 1961, Peter received a student grant which allowed him to spend the next year traveling the world and making notes about his experiences. Upon his return, he served a six-month stint in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, but his passion was writing. In 1963, Peter began working as a reporter for The Washington Post and soon thereafter began working as the radio and television editor for Newsweek magazine. It was far from the writer’s dream that Peter had envisioned, but he was earning a living. In the summer of 1963, 23-year-old Peter joined other tourists on a tour of the White House. He purchased the $1 White House guidebook that first lady Jacqueline Kennedy had organized. During the tour, Peter got the idea for a children’s book in which a little girl visits the White House on her birthday. She smuggles her kitten onto the tour, but it escapes, causes all sorts of chaos, and she ends up face-to-face with President Kennedy. During the writing process, Peter decided the mischief was more befitting a boy and his puppy than a girl and her kitten. In the book, the boy, Jonathan, eludes guards and ignores the numerous roped off areas as he chases his puppy, Tiger, through the Blue Room, the Red Room, the State Dining Room, the Lincoln bedroom, through the garden on the White House lawn, and ends up in the Oval Office where he finds President Kennedy scratching Tiger’s ears. “You’re—you’re the president,” Jonathan gasped. “And you must be Jonathan,” President Kennedy replied. “You—you know me?” President Kennedy responded with a chuckle, “Everyone in the White House knows you now.”
President Kennedy never saw Peter’s book. He was assassinated on November 22, 1963, just two months before the book was published. In her first public document as first lady, “Lady Bird” Johnson wrote the foreword for Peter’s book on White House stationary. She ended the foreword with this invitation to young readers: “My husband and I hope one day soon you will come to visit the White House in person.” The book went on sale in February 1964. Six months later, Peter published his travel memoir entitled “Time and a Ticket.” His books sold well but failed to provide Peter with the financial security necessary for him to focus solely on writing books.
Peter worked for Newsweek until 1967 when he was hired as “a (very) junior” speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson. When President Johnson’s term ended in January 1967, Peter was determined to build a career as a freelance writer. He wrote stories for newspapers and magazines such as National Geographic, LIFE, The New Yorker, and pitched book ideas to publishers. In 1974, Peter published what was advertised as “a novel of relentless terror.” The book was such a big hit that Peter was hired to co-author a screenplay based on the book. Peter, who wrote the popular children’s book about the White House, who was a speech writer for President Lyndon Johnson, is Peter Benchley, mostly known for his “superthriller” shark tale “Jaws.”
Sources:
1. The Boston Globe, June 15, 1961, p.12.
2. The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky), January 5, 1964, p.50.
3. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), June 27, 1964, p.9.
4. Peter Benchley, “Jaws, (New York, Doubleday, 1974).
