A swimming pool, or any body of water for that matter, might as well be Walden Pond to Joe Horton.
Henry David Thoreau ranks as one of his favorite authors, “Walden” one of his favorite books. Thoreau spent two years living a simple life. He studied ants. He swam in the pond. Horton’s connection to the 19th century essayist and naturalist started in high school in California at a time when he felt embarrassed about being different because he was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away,” Thoreau wrote.
Horton loves that quote. It’s on display in his home.
“What I got from Thoreau was permission to be different,” he said.
On this warm May morning, Horton, who turns 71 in July, swims laps at the Sports Mall in Murray, though he might as well be at Walden Pond. He powers through the lane in a turquoise swim cap, goggles and light blue trunks, his white beard flashing to the surface when he turns his head to take a breath. The waterline is where all his deep thinking is done.
Immersed in aqueous solitude, the retired hospital administrator ponders and prays about his most vexing problems stroke after stroke, lap after lap. He spends the first 15 minutes of his typical hour-long swims giving thanks. He thinks about his wife, Pat, two sons and six grandchildren. He recites to himself things he likes to keep in his head, not the least of which is the Crispin Day speech, one of the most famous monologues from Shakespeare’s “Henry V.”
“I find that my problem-solving skills are better after about 30 minutes of swimming. My mind would clear. I was just sharper. So I solved a lot of problems just swimming in the pool,” he said, a congenial tone to his voice.
“But also it’s like just sort of meditating. It lends itself to that because you can’t talk to anybody. The sounds are kind of meditative. You just hear the sound of the water as you move through it and you can’t see very far, so it lends itself to meditating and prayer.”
10,000 miles and counting
Previously a runner, Horton started swimming after he tore his meniscus in a fall during a hike in Yosemite. That was in 1982. He has swum a mile three or four times a week ever since.
About a year ago, a close friend who had just run his 10,000th mile inspired him to calculate all his miles in the pool. He realized he was about 300 short of 10,000. He ramped up to six or seven times a week, hitting the milestone in late April. And he has no plans to hang up his goggles.
Swimming 10,000 miles in a lifetime is a significant physical and mental accomplishment. It’s about the equivalent of swimming across the Atlantic Ocean from New York City to the coast of Africa and back. It’s roughly 9.2 million strokes. Swimming that distance over four decades is a testament to perseverance, dedication and passion for the sport.
And for Horton, a necessity.
“He swims everywhere he goes. I think it helps him clear his head,” said his wife, former Utah state Sen. Pat Jones, whom he married in 2023 and who now goes by Jones Horton. Her husband, Dan Jones, died in 2018.
Jones Horton posted Horton’s achievement on Facebook with a photo of him holding a handwritten sign, reading, “10,000 swim miles, 4/27/2025, Congratulations, Joe!!”
A new beginning
The couple met serendipitously through University of Michigan professor Cathy Kilaly who was in Salt Lake City for a hospital administration conference in June 2022. Kilaly happened to sit next to Jones Horton in a cafe at Little America and they started talking. When Jones Horton mentioned she was on the board at Intermountain Health, the professor said she knew someone at Intermountain: Joe Horton.
As it happened, Horton, who teaches a yearly leadership class at Michigan, met Kilaly for dinner while she was in town and she told him she had shared his contact information with Jones Horton and hoped it was OK. It was more than OK. Turns out, Horton lived in her legislative district and had voted for her all five times she won seats in the Utah House and Utah Senate.
“I had no idea how important that would turn out to be later in my life,” he said.
Neither expected to ever marry again but a romance blossomed. “The truth of my life is that my marriage to Pat is a miracle,” Horton said. “That is something I thought would never happen.”
Last October, the two traveled to Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts to pay homage to Thoreau. They both swam in the crystal clear water. “I love getting into water at places that matter to me so Walden Pond is one of those, and it was wonderful to do that with Pat,” Horton said. He also swims at Laguna Beach beyond the breakers where the water is calm and clean.
“I think it keeps him young and vibrant, which is what I need,” Jones Horton said.
Motivation to swim is never a problem. “I’ve just done it for a lot of years. It’s become part of my lifestyle. I’ve become very committed to it. If I don’t do it, I don’t feel as good,” Horton said.
The ants go marching on
An English major, naturally, at the University of Utah, Horton wasn’t sure what to do with his life after graduation. After a week in law school, he decided that wasn’t for him. He took what today might be called a gap year to figure it out. He discovered hospital administration while working at LDS Hospital in the meantime. He went on to get a master’s degree in the field at the University of Minnesota.
His first administration job was at Cottonwood Hospital in Murray. His true calling, though, didn’t come until five years later. And that starts with a story about ants.
Horton didn’t study ants like Thoreau, but he protected them. On the playground in elementary school, he stood guard on an ant hill that a couple of his third-grade classmates were planning to invade to see how many ants they could kill. After a little jostling, the boys gave up. He even got the most feared teacher in school to make a rule against killing ants for no reason.
“I was the weird kid that actually thought that was wrong, I didn’t know what to call it then but Albert Schweitzer calls it reverence for life. I had that as a kid,” he said.
Horton shares that childhood memory as we sit poolside after his swim. He relates that Ann told him he’s supposed to be at a children’s hospital because he has strong feelings about protecting the vulnerable, and there’s nobody more vulnerable than babies and sick or injured children. That, she told him, fits who you are.
“When she said that it was like a lightning bolt just went through my head. I knew she was right. I’d never had that experience before or since but that was just like a moment of clarity,” he said.
That led him to Primary Children’s Hospital where he worked for 21 years, the last 14 as CEO. He finished his hospital administration career as Intermountain Health’s senior vice president over its 23 hospitals at the time. He retired in 2012 but started teaching ethics and leadership courses in the hospital administration program at the University of Utah.
And he never stopped swimming.
“What I found was that running hospitals is a pretty intense job. I needed something to manage the stress and kind of wash out the tension and it needed to be after work so I could go home and be a good human being to my family. Swimming did that better than anything else,” Horton said.
Never give up
Joe and Ann Horton were married 42 years and raised two sons. She was diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis just before they were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. She used a wheelchair the last 30 years before she died in 2021.
Swimming helped him get through what also was an intense part of his life.
“There’s so many times where I felt like I hit the wall and the swimming would kind of just bring me back. It’s going to be OK. You can do it. And the Crispin Day speech was part of that, like don’t give up,” he said.
Horton memorized the speech 30 years ago line by line as he swam. He quotes it as we sit by the pool.
“If we are mark’d to die, we are enow, To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour . . . ”
In “Henry V,” a young King Henry addresses his badly outnumbered English troops to inspire and motivate them against the French army in the Battle of Agincourt. He emphasizes honor, camaraderie and valor. He tells his soldiers that those who fight with him on St. Crispin’s Day will be forever bonded as “we happy few, we band of brothers.” He tells them that those who survive will be remembered and honored. In the end, the English suffered few casualties, while the French lost an estimated 10,000 men.
There were times when Horton felt outnumbered and couldn’t see his way out of a problem, and the stakes were always high. Instead of quitting, he recited the speech. And there was always the water.
“I really think that speech,” he said, “and with it the swimming . . . was sort of the time where I could take a breath and take heart, where I could relax, in an otherwise intense world.”
