The Life of John F. Kennedy

The Life of John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on May 29, 1917, the second of nine children. He was a US statesman and our 35th president. He came from a family with a history of good politics. As an infant he lived in a comfortable but modest frame house in that suburb of Boston. As the family got larger and the father's income and fortune increased, the Kennedys moved to larger, more impressive homes. Their first home was in Brookline, followed by the suburbs of New York City. John F. Kennedy had a happy childhood that was full of family games and sports. He attended many different private elementary schools, which were all non parochial. He later spent a year at Canterbury School in New Milford, Conn., where he was taught by Roman Catholic laymen, and four years at Choate School in Wallingford, Conn.

Now moving up to the college level Kennedy spent the summer of 1935 studying at the London School of Economics. He was then enrolled in Princeton University where an attack of jaundice caused him to leave during the Christmas break of his freshmen year. In the fall of 1936 he enrolled at Harvard University, where he devoted himself strenuously but not very successfully to athletics. He injured his back while playing football there. During his first two years at Harvard he continued to be an easygoing student; then his work improved. During his senior year in 1940 he submitted a thesis paper on the British policies that led to the Munich Pact of 1938, which was extremely well received by reviewers. Kennedy graduated cum laude from Harvard in June 1940. He then spent a number of months in 1940 and 1941 studying at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business in California as well as touring many Latin American Countries.

Kennedy favored strong rearmament for the United States, and in the spring of 1941, he volunteered for the Army, but was not accepted because of his weak back. During that summer he took many different back strengthening exercises, and in September he was accepted by the Navy. In March 1943, as a lieutenant he took command of a PT (torpedo) boat in the Solomon Islands. On the night of August 2, his boat was cruising west of New Georgia it was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer. He rallied the survivors and managed to get them to an island after being thrown across the deck onto his back. He then towed a wounded man three miles through a rough journey through different seas. He was a very brave man, for several days he risked his life repeatedly, swimming into dangerous waters hoping to find a rescue ship. He finally met up with two friendly islanders and sent them for aid with a message that he carved on a coconut. Back home he received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, and the Purple Heart, but his earlier back injury had been aggravated, and unfortunately he contracted malaria. After an operation on his back, he was discharged early in 1945.

Now he is faced with a decision to make a different career path. In 1945 Kennedy worked for several months as a reporter for the Hearst newspapers, covering the conference at San Francisco that established the United Nations. Ultimately he decided that he wanted a political career and returned to Boston. He took the place of his brother Joseph, who had seemed destined for politics but had been killed in World War II. His opportunity came when James M. Curley vacated his seat in the House of Representatives from the Democratic 11th Massachusetts Congressional District to become mayor of Boston. Early in 1946, Kennedy announced his candidacy in the June Democratic primary. He began an elaborate and aggressive campaign against nine other candidates. One of his rivals called him "the poor little rich kid," and others referred to him as an outsider, a carpetbagger. But he campaigned none the less, depending on a strong organization of personal followers rather than on regular Democratic Party workers. In the primary he almost doubled the vote of his nearest opponent, and his election in November was little more than a formality.

In April 1952, Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Senate against the Republican incumbent, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. He stuck with depending on his own organization, and based his campaign on the slogan "Kennedy will do more for Massachusetts." In November, while the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was carrying the state for president, Kennedy defeated Lodge by more than 70,000 votes. As senator, Kennedy concentrated at first on making good his campaign slogan. At the end of two years he could list a wide array of legislation he had obtained for Massachusetts businessmen. He expanded his program to cover all of New England and succeeded in uniting the senators from the area into an effective voting bloc.

Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier on Sept. 12, 1953. Together they had two children who survived infancy, Caroline Bouvier, born on Nov. 27, 1957, and John, Jr., born on Nov. 25, 1960. A third child, Patrick Bouvier, died two days after his birth on Aug. 7, 1963. Not long after their marriage, Jacqueline Kennedy had to help her husband through a serious illness. Increasingly aggravated by his injured back, he underwent spinal operations in October 1954 and February 1955. During his long hospital stay he occupied himself by writing a study of notable acts of political courage by eight United States senators. This book, published in 1956 as Profiles in Courage, received the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. When he was released he had a different view on the issues he dealt with. In May 1955, Kennedy returned to the Senate after his illness, and shifted his attention more and more toward national and international issues. He had previously told a magazine writer, with reference to critics who complained that he was not a "true liberal," that "I'd be very happy to tell them that I'm not a liberal at all." But by 1957 he was taking liberal positions on the difficult question of civil liberties. He helped arrange a compromise between Northern and Southern positions on the civil rights bill passed in 1957. In Jackson, Miss., he frankly asserted that he accepted the Supreme Court decision of 1954 on desegregation of the nation's public schools. In 1957 Kennedy also obtained membership on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he supported most of the Democratic policies. His emphasis shifted from military programs to economic aid to underdeveloped areas. In 1958 and 1959 he devoted a lot of his time and effort to labor reform legislation, but in the end he was forced to accept the Landrum-Griffin bill, which incorporated some of his reforms but was less favorable to labor.

Beginning in 1956, Kennedy aimed toward higher office. In the Democratic Convention of that year he almost wrested