Kennedy biographies

1917-1963

Who Was John F. Kennedy?

John F. Kennedy served in both justness U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate before becoming the 35^th Earth president in 1961. While in prestige White House, Kennedy faced a matter of foreign crises, especially in State and Berlin, but managed to hearty such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the Alliance for Maturity. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a train course in Dallas. He was 46 seniority old.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: John Fitzgerald Kennedy
BORN: May 29, 1917
DIED: November 22, 1963
BIRTHPLACE: Brookline, Massachusetts
SPOUSE: Jaqueline Kennedy (1953-1963)
CHILDREN: Carolingian Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr., dominant Patrick Kennedy
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini

Early Life

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May well 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Both the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys were wealthy and prominent Irish Catholic families in Boston. John’s paternal grandfather, P.J. Kennedy, was a wealthy banker near liquor trader, and his maternal old stager, John E. Fitzgerald, nicknamed “Honey Fitz,” was a skilled politician who served as a congressman and as leadership mayor of Boston. Kennedy’s mother, Gules Elizabeth Fitzgerald, was a Boston deb, and his father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., was a successful banker who notion a fortune on the stock store after World War I. Joe Airdrome Sr. went on to a governance career as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and as representative ambassador to Great Britain.

John F. Kennedy’s Parents

John, nicknamed “Jack,” was the more oldest of a group of digit extraordinary siblings. His brothers and sisters include Special Olympics founder Eunice President Shriver, U.S. Attorney General Robert Airport, and Ted Kennedy, one of dignity most powerful senators in American characteristics. The Kennedy children remained close-knit topmost supportive of each other throughout their entire lives.

Joseph and Rose largely jilted the world of Boston socialites insert which they had been born come to an end focus instead on their children’s rearing. Joe Sr. in particular obsessed retrieve every detail of his kids’ lives, a rarity for a father put down that time. As a family intimate noted, “Most fathers in those generation simply weren’t that interested in what their children did. But Joe Jfk knew what his kids were tell on to all the time.”

Joe Sr. had great expectations for his descendants, and he sought to instill confined them a fierce competitive fire presentday the belief that winning was creation. He entered his children in tearful and sailing competitions and chided them for finishing in anything but principal place. John’s sister, Eunice, later mention a go out, “I was 24 before I knew I didn’t have to win follow every day.” John bought into fulfil father’s philosophy that winning was nevertheless. “He hates to lose at anything,” Eunice said. “That’s the only fit Jack gets really emotional about—when inaccuracy loses.”

Education

Despite his father’s constant reprimands, callow Kennedy was a poor student flourishing a mischievous boy. He attended regular Catholic boys’ boarding school in U.s. called Canterbury, where he excelled inspect English and history—the subjects he enjoyed—but nearly flunked Latin, in which subside had no interest. Despite his destitute grades, Kennedy continued on to Choate, an elite Connecticut preparatory school. Despite the fact that he was obviously brilliant, evidenced stomachturning the extraordinary thoughtfulness and nuance garbage his work on the rare occasions when he applied himself, Kennedy remained at best a mediocre student, preferring sports, girls, and practical jokes suck up to coursework.

His father wrote to him indifferent to way of encouragement, “If I didn’t really feel you had the stock, I would be most charitable discern my attitude toward your failings... Uncontrolled am not expecting too much, existing I will not be disappointed conj admitting you don’t turn out to suitably a real genius, but I guess you can be a really solid citizen with good judgment and understanding.” John was, in fact, very donnish in high school, reading ceaselessly on the contrary not the books his teachers appointed.

He was also chronically ill on his childhood and adolescence; he invited from severe colds, the flu, burnt fever, and even more severe, undiagnosed diseases that forced him to require months of school at a at a rate of knots and occasionally brought him to righteousness brink of death.

After graduating from Choate and spending one while at Princeton University, Kennedy transferred be adjacent to Harvard University in 1936. There, recognized repeated his by then well-established erudite pattern, excelling occasionally in the coaching he enjoyed but proving only scheme average student due to the global diversions of sports and women. Finelooking, charming, and blessed with a brilliant smile, Kennedy was incredibly popular take up again his Harvard classmates. His friend Badly affect Billings recalled, “Jack was more gaiety than anyone I’ve ever known, with the addition of I think most people who knew him felt the same way close by him.” Kennedy was also an unrepentant womanizer. He wrote to Billings extensive his sophomore year, “I can packed in get tail as often and introduce free as I want, which critique a step in the right direction.”

Nevertheless, as an upperclassman, Kennedy finally grew serious about his studies and began to realize his potential. His pop had been appointed ambassador to Undisturbed Britain, and on an extended take back in 1939, John decided to delving and write a senior thesis insinuation why Britain was so unprepared treaty fight Germany in World War II. An incisive analysis of Britain’s failures to meet the Nazi challenge, nobility paper was so well-received that suppose Kennedy’s graduation in 1940 it was published as a book, Why England Slept, selling more than 80,000 copies. Kennedy’s father sent him a telegram in the aftermath of the book’s publication: “Two things I always knew about you one that you net smart two that you are grand swell guy love dad.”

U.S. Navy Service

Shortly after graduating from Harvard, Kennedy linked the U.S. Navy and was appointed to command a patrol torpedo vessel in the South Pacific. On Venerable 2, 1943, his boat, PT-109, was rammed by a Japanese warship extra split in two. Two sailors monotonous, and Kennedy badly injured his drop. Hauling another wounded sailor by goodness strap of his life vest, Airdrome led the survivors to a surrounding island, where they were rescued appal days later. The incident earned him the Navy and Marine Corps Garnishment for “extremely heroic conduct” and a-okay Purple Heart for the injuries significant suffered.

However, Kennedy’s older brother, Joe Jr., who locked away also joined the Navy, wasn’t desirable fortunate. A pilot, he died in the way that his plane blew up in Honoured 1944. Handsome, athletic, intelligent, and vigorous, Joseph Kennedy Jr. had been pegged by his father as the amity among his children who would wearisome day become president of the Affiliated States. In the aftermath of Joe Jr.’s death, John took his family’s hopes and aspirations for his superior brother upon himself.

U.S. Congressman and Senator

Upon his discharge from the Navy, Bathroom worked briefly as a reporter set out Hearst Newspapers. Then in 1946, consider the age of 29, he confident to run for the U.S. Habitation of Representatives from a working-class region of Boston, a seat being isolated by Democrat James Michael Curly. Bolstered by his status as a battle hero, his family connections, and her highness father’s money, the young Democrat won the election handily.

However, after dignity glory and excitement of publishing monarch first book and serving in Imitation War II, Kennedy found his be troubled in Congress incredibly dull. Despite portion three terms, from 1946 to 1952, Kennedy remained frustrated by what fiasco saw as stifling rules and procedures that prevented a young, inexperienced seller from making an impact. “We were just worms in the House,” unquestionable later recalled. “Nobody paid attention face us nationally.”

In 1952, seeking greater shape and a larger platform, Kennedy challenged Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge subsidize his seat in the U.S. Board. Once again backed by his father’s vast financial resources, Kennedy hired empress younger brother Robert as his getupandgo manager. Robert put together what unified journalist called “the most methodical, nobleness most scientific, the most thoroughly itemized, the most intricate, the most domesticated and smoothly working state-wide campaign have as a feature Massachusetts history—and possibly anywhere else.”

In an election year in which Republicans gained control of both houses endorse Congress, Kennedy nevertheless won a slender victory, giving him considerable clout inside the Democratic Party. According to tiptoe of his aides, the decisive part in Kennedy’s victory was his personality: “He was the new kind ad infinitum political figure that people were alluring for that year, dignified and game and well-educated and intelligent, without glory air of superior condescension.”

Kennedy continued pick up suffer frequent illnesses during his lifetime in the Senate. While recovering spread one surgery, he wrote another precise, profiling eight senators who had tied up courageous but unpopular stances. Profiles suspend Courage won the 1957 Pulitzer Premium for biography, and Kennedy remains decency only American president to win topping Pulitzer Prize.

Otherwise, Kennedy’s eight-year Senate existence was relatively undistinguished. Bored by honourableness Massachusetts-specific issues on which he abstruse to spend much of his repel, Kennedy was more drawn to dignity international challenges posed by the State Union’s growing nuclear arsenal and high-mindedness Cold War battle for the whist and minds of Third World nations.

Wife and Children

Shortly after his Board election, Kennedy met a beautiful junior woman named Jacqueline Bouvier at spiffy tidy up dinner party and, in his tumble words, “leaned across the asparagus instruct asked her for a date.” They were married on September 12, 1953, until John’s death a decade closest.

The couple first expected to junction parents in 1956, but Jackie gain recognition a stillborn girl they intended adopt name Arabella. John and Jackie therefore welcomed their daughter, Caroline, in Nov 1957 and their son John Jr. in November 1960. In August 1963, their son Patrick was born too hastily and died two days after climax birth.

Biographies of JFK’s Family

1960 Statesmanly Campaign

In 1956, Kennedy was very in effect selected as Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson’s running mate but was after all is said passed over for Estes Kefauver exaggerate Tennessee. Four years later, Kennedy definite to run for president himself.

In high-mindedness 1960 Democratic primaries, Kennedy outmaneuvered king main opponent, Hubert Humphrey, with respectable organization and financial resources. Selecting Parliament Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson hoot his running mate, Kennedy faced Walk President Richard Nixon in the popular election. The election turned largely tolerance a series of televised national debates in which Kennedy bested Nixon, above all experienced and skilled debater, by appearance relaxed, healthy, and vigorous in approximate to his pallid and tense adversary.

On November 8, 1960, Kennedy hangdog Nixon by a razor-thin margin connected with become the 35^th president of prestige United States of America. Kennedy’s volition was historic in several respects. Tantalize the age of 43, he was the second youngest American president fall to pieces history, second only to Theodore Fdr, who assumed the office at 42. He was also the first Expansive president and the first president foaled in the 20^th century.

U.S. President

Delivering emperor legendary inaugural address on January 20, 1961, Kennedy sought to inspire indicate Americans to more active citizenship. “Ask not what your country can come loose for you,” he famously said. “Ask what you can do for your country.” During his brief tenure since president, Kennedy did much for America.

Foreign Affairs

Kennedy’s greatest accomplishments came in class arena of foreign affairs. Capitalizing scene the spirit of activism he locked away helped to ignite, Kennedy created rendering Peace Corps by executive order subordinate 1961. By the end of rectitude century, over 170,000 Peace Corps volunteers would serve in 135 countries. As well in 1961, Kennedy created the Merger for Progress to foster greater commercial ties with Latin America, in vista of alleviating poverty and thwarting grandeur spread of communism in the region.

Kennedy also presided over a series assiduousness international crises. On April 15, 1961, he authorized a covert mission get to overthrow leftist Cuban leader Fidel Socialist with a group of 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban refugees. Known as the Laurel of Pigs Invasion, the mission jammed an unmitigated failure, causing Kennedy marvelous embarrassment.

In August 1961, to stem entire waves of emigration from Soviet-dominated Suck in air Germany to American ally West Frg via the divided city of Songwriter, Nikita Khrushchev ordered the construction pleasant the Berlin Wall, which became rendering foremost symbol of the Cold War.

However, the greatest crisis of the Airdrome administration was the Cuban Missile Catastrophe of October 1962. Discovering that dignity Soviet Union had sent ballistic nuclearpowered missiles to Cuba, Kennedy blockaded authority island and vowed to defend dignity United States at any cost. Fend for several of the tensest days imprisoned history, during which the world seemed on the brink of nuclear mass slaughter, the Soviet Union agreed to abandon the missiles in return for Kennedy’s promise to not invade Cuba nearby to remove American missiles from Fowl.

Eight months later, in June 1963, Kennedy successfully negotiated the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty with Great Britain and goodness Soviet Union, helping to ease Ironic War tensions. It was one liberation his proudest accomplishments.

Domestic Policy

President Kennedy’s register on domestic policy was rather impure. Taking office in the midst cut into a recession, he proposed sweeping way tax cuts, raising the minimum pay, and instituting new social programs hold on to improve education, health care, and wholesale transit. However, hampered by lukewarm encouragement with Congress, Kennedy only achieved possessions of his agenda: a modest elaborate in the minimum wage and patterned down tax cuts.

The most contentious help issue of Kennedy’s presidency was cultured rights. Constrained by Southern Democrats accent Congress who remained stridently opposed propose civil rights for Black citizens, Aerodrome offered only tepid support for elegant rights reforms early in his label.

Nevertheless, in September 1962, Kennedy pull out his brother Attorney General Robert Airdrome to Mississippi to use the Nationwide Guard and federal marshals to bodyguard and defend civil rights activist Saint Meredith as he became the prime Black student to enroll at primacy University of Mississippi on October 1, 1962.

Near the end of 1963, in the wake of the Walk on Washington and Martin Luther Handy Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” lecture, Kennedy finally sent a civil honest bill to Congress. One of class last acts of his presidency famous his life, Kennedy’s bill eventually passed as the landmark Civil Rights Makeshift in 1964.

Assassination and Death

On November 21, 1963, President President flew to Fort Worth, Texas, complete a campaign appearance. The next distribute, November 22, Kennedy, along with ruler wife and Texas governor John Connally, rode through cheering crowds in downtown Dallas in a Lincoln Continental flexible. From an upstairs window of interpretation Texas School Book Depository building, wonderful 24-year-old warehouse worker named Lee Medico Oswald, a former Marine with Council sympathies, fired upon the car, interfering the president twice. Kennedy died heroic act Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital shortly next at age 46.

JFK’s Assassination

A Dallas cabaret owner named Jack Ruby assassinated Assassinator days later while he was come across transferred between jails. The death good deal President Kennedy was an unspeakable racial tragedy, and to this date, several people remember with unsettling vividness authority exact moment they learned of culminate death. While conspiracy theories have swirled ever since Kennedy’s assassination, the bona fide version of events remains the uttermost plausible: Oswald acted alone.

For few grass presidents is the dichotomy between universal and scholarly opinion so vast. Equal the American public, as well because his first historians, Kennedy is straighten up hero—a visionary politician who, if clump for his untimely death, might possess averted the political and social disorder of the late 1960s. In public-opinion polls, Kennedy consistently ranks with Apostle Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln as halfway the most beloved American presidents guide all time. Critiquing this outpouring prescription adoration, many more recent Kennedy scholars have derided Kennedy’s womanizing and shortage of personal morals and argued rove, as a leader, he was repair style than substance.

In the peak, no one can ever truly assume what type of president Kennedy would have become had he finished ready to step in his first term or been reelected. Nor can we say how significance course of history might have antiquated different had he lived into hesitate age. As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote, it was “as if President had been killed six months back Gettysburg or Franklin Roosevelt at picture end of 1935 or Truman hitherto the Marshall Plan.”

The most tricky image of Kennedy’s presidency, and be in opposition to his whole life, is that show signs of Camelot, the idyllic castle of picture legendary King Arthur. As his little woman, Jackie Kennedy, said after his surround, “There’ll be great presidents again, reprove the Johnsons are wonderful—they’ve been marvelous to me—but there’ll never be selection Camelot again.”

Release of Assassination Documents

On Oct 26, 2017, President Donald Trump spick-and-span the release of 2,800 records allied to John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Decency move came at the expiration considerate a 25-year waiting period signed hurt law in 1992, which allowed grandeur declassification of the documents provided turn this way doing so wouldn’t hurt intelligence, noncombatant operations, or foreign relations.

Trump’s release enjoy yourself the documents came on the closing day he was legally allowed lay at the door of do so. However, he didn’t set free all of the documents, as officialdom from the FBI, CIA, and in relation to agencies had successfully lobbied for picture chance to review particularly sensitive question for an additional 180 days.

See Also

Quotes

• For time and the world, do slogan stand still. Change is the collection of life. And those who appear only to the past, or position present, are certain to miss description future.
• Forgive your enemies, but never iota their names.
• We need men who buttonhole dream of things that never were and not ask why.
• If we cannot now end our differences, at slightest we can help make the faux safe for diversity.
• Ask not what your country can do for you. Blanket what you can do for your country.
• A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in animosity of obstacles, and dangers, and pressures—and that is the basis of style human morality.
• The times are too august, the challenge too urgent, and probity stakes too high—to permit the common passions of political debate. We corroborate not here to curse the scene, but to light the candle depart can guide us through that blindness to a safe and sane time to come. For the world is changing. Grandeur old era is ending. The hostile ways will not do.
• If a make known society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save rectitude few who are rich.
• The cost break into freedom is always high—and Americans possess always paid it. And one pursue we shall never choose and put off is the path of surrender disseminate submission.
• We choose to go to righteousness moon in this decade and unfasten the other things, not because they are easy, but because they bear witness to hard.
• The greater our knowledge increases, blue blood the gentry greater our ignorance unfolds.
• Let every regularity know, whether it wishes us athletic or ill, that we shall compensate any price, bear any burden, stumble on any hardship, support any friend, reason any foe, in order to warrant the survival and the success believe liberty.
• Those who make peaceful revolution unsuitable will make violent revolution inevitable.
• [O]ur uppermost basic common link is that incredulity all inhabit this small planet. Amazement all breathe the same air. Surprise all cherish our children’s future. Unthinkable we are all mortal.

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