John F Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917 in Brookline Massachusetts.  He was the second of nine children and grew up looking up to his older brother Joseph.  As a child he spent many hours in the park learning about history.  He thought if he spent time with his grandpa than he wouldn't miss a thing.  If he wasn't at the park he was playing with his brothers and sisters.  As he was growing their fathers income was increasing.  Most of his childhood was filled with studying, playing family games, and playing sports.  He attended  private schools in elementary none of which were parochial.  He later spent a year at Canterbury school in New Milford Connecticut.  After he spent 4 years at Choate school in Wallingford Connecticut.  John played 12 sports none of which he made the varsity.  When he graduated from Choate in 1935 he ranked 64th in a class of only 112.  However a lot of his classmates picked him "most likely to succeed".  He spent the summer of 1935 studying London school of economics.  After that summer he entered Princeton university but had to leave because of an attack of jaundice.  After he had to leave he entered Harvard University but hurt his back playing football.  While he was there he had 2 trips to Europe one in in 1937 and 1939.

 

In 1937 it gave him a chance to see actual political power.  In 1939his trip allowed him to stay in American Embassy's talking to some important people.  He graduated cum laude from Harvard in June 1940.  In 1941 he volunteered for the army but was turned down because he had a bad back from that football injury at Harvard.  That summer he strengthened up by working out and running and in that September the Navy accepted him.  He went to World War Two in the South Pacific, he earned a purple heart of courage for saving his crew by swimming them to shore after a Japanese boat rammed them.  In June 1946 he announced his candidacy in the Democratic party.  He began against nine other candidates some called him the "poor little rich kid" others saw him as an outsider.  As a representative he was reelected in 1948 and 1950 but had mixed voting records.  In April 1952 he ran candidacy for senate  against Republican Henry Cabot Lodge JR. Kennedy's slogan was "I will do more for Massachusetts".  This was happening when Eisenhower was president and Kennedy won by more than 70,000 votes.         
He married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953.  Also in 1953 in the Boston area he advanced to senate.  In 1955 while recovering from a back operation he wrote "Profiles in Courage" which won him the Pulitzer Prize.  Not long after marriage she had to help him through a serious illness plus his injured back.  After his illness he went toward national and international issues.  In 1956 he almost gained Democratic Vice President.  He helped get a compromise among Northern and Southern positions on the civil rights bill passed in 1957.  Three years later he was  the first ballot nominee for President.  One of his injunctions was at that time was "Ask not what your country can do  for you-- ask what you can do for your country.  In 1961 he was elected the 35th President.  After Russians installed missiles in Cuba, in 1962 he imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons bound from Cuba.  This meant that U.S. warships would halt and search Russians ships.  He expressed his determination in these words "This secret, swift and extraordinary build up of communist missiles in an area well known to have a special and historical relationship to the U.S. and the nations of Western Hemisphere-- is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country if our courage and our commitments are ever again to be trusted by either friend or foe."  Then on October 28 after an exchange of notes between Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev, it was announced that the Soviet Union would withdraw its offensive weapons in Cuba.  During that missile confrontation Kennedy received widespread international support and later was credited with having achieved a turning point favorable to the west in the war.  In another tension he responded to the Soviet Union under nuclear tests.  He urged them to join the United States and Britain in an agreement not to conduct tests in the atmosphere.  On August 5, 1963 after negotiations the U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union signed a limited nuclear test ban treaty forbidding atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.  This marked the first limitations of arms expansion since the cold war began.  In  Southeast Asia, the dominant threat of Chinese Communist domination forced the president to strengthened the defense of that area.  Although limited numbers of the U.S. military advisers had been sent to the South Vietnam for anti-guerrilla operations since 1954 have increased in numbers under the Kennedy administration from about 700 to more than 1,5000.  On a global scale, Kennedy established the peace corps, in March 1961 he authorized through this program headed by his brother-in-law, Sergeant Shriver, Many Americans were encouraged to value their skills to "sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that descent way of life which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace".  In anticipation of the growth of the European common market, he obtained from congress the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which granted him authority to bargain by offering drastic tariff reductions.  "Acting our own, by ourselves we cannot establish justice throughout the world", he asserted on July 4, 1962.  "But joined with other free nations, we can...assist the developing nations to throw off the yoke of poverty."  In November 22 1963, he was on a speechmaking in Dallas they were riding and cheering enthusiastically as their open car passed.  

   Then at 12:30 an assassin fired several shots, striking Kennedy twice in the base of the head and neck and seriously wounding John Connelly, governor of Texas, who was riding with Kennedy.  Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital.  About a half hour later the president was announced dead.  That day the police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of Kennedy.  Oswald had lived for a while in the Soviet Union.  He killed Dallas policeman J.D. Tippet while resisting arrest.  Two days later in the basement of the Dallas police station, Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby a night club member.  In 1979 the house assassinations committee after two years of investigation said that Lee Harvey Oswald probably was part of a conspiracy that also may have included members of a organized crime.  After the death of Kennedy and Oswald 18 material witnesses died.

6 by gun fire 
3 in motor accidents
2 by suicide
2 by natural causes
1 by a cut throat
1 by a karate chop to the neck
The day of Jfk's funeral was also John Juniors birthday
 

 

 

Chris Linnemann
8th American History
Rossville Jr. High                                                                              Bibliography
John F Kennedy
May 2002