Overview - John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy Historic World Leaders, 1994 Updated: April 05, 2013 Born: May 29, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts, United States Died: November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, United States Nationality: American Occupation: President (Government) "The tragedy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was greater than the accomplishment, but in the end the tragedy enhances the accomplishment and revives the hope." ---James Reston 1938 Joseph P. Kennedy appointed ambassador to England 1939 Poland invaded by Hitler; England and France declared war 1941 JFK commissioned U.S. Navy ensign; Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor 1943 PT-109 sunk in the Pacific 1946 Elected to U.S. House of Representatives (Massachusetts) 1952 Elected to U.S. Senate (Massachusetts) 1956 Defeated for vice presidential nomination 1960 Elected president by extremely narrow margin 1961 Announced Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress; Laotian Crisis and military alert; Cuba invaded at Bay of Pigs; U.S. Marshals ordered to Alabama after violence against "Freedom Riders"; Summit meeting with Khrushchev; Berlin Crisis; General Taylor reported U.S. aid could bring military victory in Vietnam 1962 JFK forced a rollback on steel prices; U.S. troops used to integrate University of Mississippi; Cuban Missile Crisis; Executive Order signed barring racial discrimination in public housing 1963 JFK submitted civil rights bill to Congress; Civil Rights March on Washington; Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified; Diem of South Vietnam assassinated in military coup; Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Texas 1964 Lyndon Johnson elected president; Robert Kennedy elected to U.S. Senate 1968 Robert Kennedy announced candidacy for presidency; Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis; Robert Kennedy assassinated in Los Angeles Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917; assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963; son of Joseph Patrick and Rose (Fitzgerald) Kennedy; brother of Robert Francis Kennedy and Edward Moore Kennedy; married: Jacqueline Bouvier; children: Caroline Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg and John F. Kennedy Jr. Predecessor: Dwight David Eisenhower. Successor: Lyndon Baines Johnson. John F. Kennedy left an immeasurable imprint on America in the latter part of the 20th century, despite being president for just over a thousand days, despite a modest record of accomplishments and a penchant for stirring crises, and despite certain character flaws revealed after his death. Remembered less for what he did than for what he might have done, Kennedy was assassinated at the peak of his political power, and thus unable to fulfill the high expectations he generated with moving speeches and unmatched personal magnetism and popularity. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the second of nine children born into the extraordinary family of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. "Perhaps no American family," historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote in The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, "has had a more vivid and powerful impact on the life of their times." America's fascination with the Kennedys goes beyond their public achievements. The Kennedy tale, according to Goodwin, is "the spiral compound of glory, achievement, degradation and almost mythical tragedy." The Kennedy tale is woven around their passion for power and prestige, a passion that emerges from their Irish-American heritage. "The main motif of Irish history" in the United States, according to William Shannon, is "the search for power." Empowerment and recognition for the Kennedys came through personal wealth and politics. John Kennedy's great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, emigrated from Ireland to Boston in 1849, worked as a barrel maker, and died of cholera in 1858. His only son, Patrick Joseph (P.J.) Kennedy, struggled up from poverty to success in the saloon and liquor-import businesses, branched out into banking, became a backroom political operator and forged a tenuous alliance with John Francis ("Honey Fitz") Fitzgerald, the quintessential merry Irish "politico" who was elected to three terms in Congress and two terms as mayor of Boston. P.J. Kennedy's son, Joseph P. Kennedy and Fitzgerald's daughter, Rose, were married in 1914, two years after Joe's graduation from Harvard. They first resided in Brookline, a middle-class Boston suburb. During their early years, the nine children were nominally under Rose's charge. As they matured, Joe's involvement with his children's lives intensified. He exercised, according to Goodwin, "an almost primitive dominion over his children's youthful souls." Investments in various enterprises, including banking, ship building, real estate, liquor importing, and motion pictures, made Joseph Kennedy one of the richest men in America. To be nearer the financial action and to escape the presumed Yankee prejudices against Irish Catholics, he moved his family to an upper-class New York City suburb in 1927. The Kennedys passed the years of the Great Depression in privileged and luxurious isolation from America's social and economic torment. Kennedy provided financial backing to Franklin Roosevelt's successful presidential campaign in 1932 and was named to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (1934) and the Maritime Commission (1937). In December of 1937, Roosevelt gave Kennedy the prestigious position he craved, the ambassadorship to Great Britain. Joe Kennedy's impatient demeanor, combined with his brusque, profane, and blunt manner caused problems for President Franklin Roosevelt and, later, cast shadows over his sons' political careers. During the critical months preceding the onset of World War II, Kennedy openly sided with British "appeasers" who advocated concessions to Hitler at the Munich conference of 1938. He indiscreetly revealed anti-Semitic attitudes, crudely maligned Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the British royal family, and clumsily managed the few tasks entrusted to him by an annoyed Roosevelt. After angrily confronting Kennedy, Roosevelt told his wife, "I never want to see that sonofabitch again as long as I live." His own public career ending in 1940, Kennedy devoted himself to his sons' prospects. His goal: to make Joe Junior president of the United States. Joe Junior and "Jack," as John was called, shared the male Kennedys' good looks: strong, straight jaws, high cheekbones, gray-blue animated eyes, and reddish-brown hair. Young Joe was taller, stronger and two years older. Jack rebelled against his brother's domineering and overbearing manner. They fought constantly. Young Joe always won. John followed his older brother through Choate and Harvard, where Joe's successes loomed before him. Young Joe accepted unquestioningly his father's values and code of manly conduct, which stressed self-control, physical toughness, and, above all, winning. "The win-win-win compulsion," historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. observed, "dominated the household." John was competitive and perseverant, but less intense and not as obsessed with winning. Cool and laconic, John Kennedy carried into adulthood a detached and analytical outlook on life. Recurrent illnesses during his youth forced him to spend many hours alone reading in bed. Fascinated with the romantic figures of history and an ardent observer of current events, John was, nonetheless, an indifferent student until 1940, his senior year at Harvard. Stimulated by the calamitous events in Europe and fortified with his experiences as Ambassador Kennedy's traveling secretary, John wrote a Harvard senior thesis on Britain's unpreparedness for war, which was published as Why England Slept. Undecided on a career, but certain of eventual American involvement in the expanding war, John was accepted into the navy, which overlooked his poor medical history. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Ensign John Kennedy was assigned to Naval Intelligence in Washington. There he began an affair with Inga Arvad (Mrs. Paul Fejos), a beautiful, twice-married Dane, once photographed with Hitler. Suspecting (incorrectly) Inga was a German agent, the FBI recorded their liaisons. Kennedy was reassigned to sea duty on PT boats, the small, fast crafts used to torpedo large ships. On August 2, 1943, a Japanese destroyer rammed Kennedy's PT-109 as it lay dead in Pacific waters. Decorated for his actions in rescuing surviving crew members, Kennedy was declared a "hero" by the New York Times. John Hersey's account, first published in the New Yorker, was reprinted in Reader's Digest, and widely circulated in each of John Kennedy's election campaigns. Kennedy's Brother Joe Is Killed A year later, brother Joe was killed instantly when his dynamite-laden aircraft exploded while on a dangerous, perhaps foolhardy volunteer mission in Europe. John's father was devastated. He had placed all his hopes on his eldest son. When, in September 1944, John's sister, Kathleen, learned her English husband was killed in action, she wrote: "Life is so cruel. Luckily I am a Kennedy." John Kennedy now felt an "unnamed responsibility" to his parents, brothers, and sisters. In 1946, Joe Kennedy sent John into public life "to take Joe's place," to run for the same seat in Congress John's grandfather "Honey Fitz" held nearly five decades earlier. The Kennedys were a new force in American politics. Relying on Joe Kennedy's money, an imaginative use of the old Boston Irish political machine, a powerful public relations machine, and the personal involvement of the glamorous Kennedy family, the Kennedys bypassed the Democratic Party organization. John