John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Born 29 May 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts, United States of America

Ancestors

Husband of Jacqueline Lee (Bouvier) Onassis — married 12 Sep 1953 in St. Mary's Church, Newport, Rhode Island,

Descendants

Died 22 Nov 1963 at age 46 in Dallas, Texas, United States of America

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John Kennedy was the President of the United States. Join: US Presidents Project Discuss: presidents

Preceded by 34th President Dwight Eisenhower Preceded by Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

John F. Kennedy 35th President of the United States 1961—1963 US Senator (Class 1) from Massachusetts 1953—1960

Succeeded by 36th President Lyndon Johnson Succeeded by Benjamin A. Smith II

Biography

John Kennedy is Notable.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29th 1917 at Brookline, Massachusetts.

His father Joseph Kennedy was an ambitious politician, who rose from son of a pubkeeper to a millionaire. He married the daughter of the mayor of Boston, Rose Fitzgerald. John F. was their second son.^[1]

John F. Kennedy served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate before becoming the 35th president in 1961. As president, Kennedy faced a number of foreign crises, especially in Cuba and Berlin, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the Alliance for Progress. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. ^[2]

Early Life

John was born with Addison's disease and given the last rites at birth. He was also chronically ill during his childhood and adolescence; he suffered from severe colds, the flu, scarlet fever and even more severe, undiagnosed diseases that forced him to miss months of school at a time and occasionally brought him to the brink of death.

Education

Kennedy was bookish in high school, reading ceaselessly but not the books his teachers assigned.

After graduating from Choate and spending one semester at Princeton, Kennedy transferred to Harvard University in 1936. There, he repeated his by then well-established academic pattern, excelling occasionally in the classes he enjoyed, but proving only an average student due to the omnipresent diversions of sports and women. He graduated from Harvard in 1940.

Military

John Kennedy was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.

John Kennedy was awarded the Purple Heart.

Shortly after graduating from Harvard, Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy and was assigned to command a patrol torpedo boat in the South Pacific. On August 2, 1943 his boat, PT-109, was rammed by a Japanese warship and split in two. Two sailors died and Kennedy badly injured his back. Hauling another wounded sailor by the strap of his life vest, Kennedy led the survivors to a nearby island, where they were rescued six days later. The incident earned him the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for "extremely heroic conduct" and a Purple Heart for the injuries he suffered. ^[2]

To read more details on his military career: John F. Kennedy's Naval History

Marriage and Children

Shortly after his election to the US Senate, Kennedy met Jacqueline Bouvier at a dinner party and, in his own words, "leaned across the asparagus and asked her for a date." They married at St Mary's Catholic Church in Newport, Rhode Island on September 12, 1953, and had three children: Caroline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Patrick Kennedy and two children who died at birth.

November 22, 1963 Son, Patrick Kennedy - His body and that of a stillborn sister, whom Jacqueline Kennedy called Arabella, were re-interred on December 5, 1963, alongside their father at Arlington National Cemetery, and later again moved to their permanent graves in Section 45, Grid U-35.^[3]

Death & Legacy

On November 21, 1963, President Kennedy flew to Dallas, Texas for a campaign appearance. The next day, November 22, Kennedy, along with his wife and Texas governor John Connally, rode through cheering crowds in downtown Dallas in a Lincoln Continental convertible. From an upstairs window of the Texas School Book Depository building, a 24-year-old warehouse worker named Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine with Soviet sympathies, fired upon the car, hitting the president twice. Kennedy died at Parkland Memorial Hospital shortly thereafter, at the age of 46.

To the American public, as well as his first historians, John F. Kennedy is a hero -- a visionary politician who, if not for his untimely death, may have averted the political and social turmoil of the late 1960s. In public opinion polls, Kennedy consistently ranks with Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln as among the most beloved American presidents of all time.

Critiquing this outpouring of adoration, many more recent Kennedy scholars have derided Kennedy's womanizing and lack of personal morals and argued that as a leader he was more style than substance. In the end, no one can ever truly know what type of president John F. Kennedy would have become, or the different course history may have taken had he lived into old age.

Timeline

1917 Born in Brookline, Massachusetts

1946 - 1940 Attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts

1940 Authored book "While England Slept"

1940 - 1943 U.S. Navy

1943 Navy medal for extremely heroic conduct and Purple Heart

1946 - 1952 U.S. House of Representatives

1952 U.S. Senator

1953 Marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier

1957 Authored "Profiles in Courage" which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography

1960 Elected 35th US President

1963 Assassinated in Dallas, Texas

Sources

1. ↑ American History online
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} John F. Kennedy. (2014). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 05:50, Jan 11, 2014, from John F Kennedy Biography
3. ↑ Wikipedia Reference: Altman, Lawrence K. (29 July 2013). "A Kennedy Baby's Life and Death". The New York Times (New York, New York). Retrieved 29 July 2013.

See also:

• Wikipedia: John F. Kennedy
• Find A Grave: Memorial #574
• St. Mary's, Newport web site