In 1988 I had the chance to meet Ted Sorenson who as a very young man had become John F. Kennedy’s speech writer and believed ghost writer for Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, Profiles in Courage.

Now, Sorenson, a Nebraska native, was campaigning in the state for former Governor Bob Kerrey who was running for the US Senate and I was a staffer for.

I was excited to meet Sorenson as Kennedy was a hero of mine and that Kennedy was considered one of America’s great communicators, made it all the more appealing that I got to spend time with the person who wrote Kennedy’s most memorable speeches.

During a break in campaigning, I asked Sorenson if there was anything that stood out that made Kennedy such a strong communicator.

There was.

Sorenson told me this story:

Remember Steve, John Kennedy was severely wounded in WWII and suffered a back injury that haunted him his entire life, he said.

I told him I was familiar with President Kennedy’s injury.

Sorenson continued: At one point early in his career, Jack came to me and told me to begin writing his speeches in four or five-word segments.

I said, “Jack, that’s crazy. I’m not going to write your speeches in four or five-word sentences.”

To which Kennedy replied, “I didn’t say ‘sentences’ I said write them in four or five-word ‘segments.’”

I said to him, “Why would I do that?”

To which Kennedy replied, “I don’t know. But I’ve noticed that when my back flairs up and I’m trying to deliver a speech, after every four or five words I have to pause and catch my breath because of the pain. And when I do that, I noticed that people are paying a lot more attention to me and my words.”

“Jack was right,” Sorenson said, “It made us both better.”

It’s a great story.

What Kennedy had stumbled onto was that fast pace is a speech killer. His astuteness and Sorenson’s wordsmithing transformed an average speaker into a great one and the rest is history.