President john f. kennedy

by Scott Cooper Florida

Born On May 29, 1917, in Brookline,  Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy served in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate before becoming the 35th president in 1961.

John F. Kennedy Early Life

John Kennedy’s paternal grandfather, P.J. Kennedy, was a wealthy banker and liquor dealer, and his maternal grandfather, John E. Fitzgerald, nicknamed “Honey Fitz,” was a skilled politician who served as a congressman and as the mayor of Boston. Kennedy’s mother, Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald, was a Boston debutante, along with his dad, Joseph Kennedy Sr., was a successful banker who left a fortune on the stock exchange after World War I. Joe Kennedy Sr. went to a government career as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and as an ambassador to Great Britain.

John F. Kennedy nicknamed “Jack,” was the 2nd oldest His brothers and sisters include Eunice Kennedy, the founder of the Special Olympics; Robert Kennedy, a U.S. Attorney General; and Ted Kennedy, among the most powerful senators in American history. The Kennedy children remained close-knit and supportive of each other during their whole lives.

Joseph And Rose Kennedy largely spurned the world of Boston socialites into which they were born to concentrate rather on their children’s education. Joe Kennedy specifically obsessed over every detail of his kids’ lives, a rarity for a dad at that moment. As a family friend noted, “Most fathers in those days simply were not that interested in what their kids did. But Joe Kennedy understood what his children were up to all of the time.” Joe Sr. had great expectations for his kids, and he sought to instill in them a ferocious competitive fire and the belief that winning was everything. He entered his kids in sailing and swimming competitions and chided them for finishing in anything but first location. John F. Kennedy’s sister Eunice later remembered, “I was twenty-four before I knew I did not need to win something daily.” “That is the only thing Jack gets really emotional about — when he loses.”

Despite his Dad’s constant reprimands young Kennedy was a bad student and a mischievous boy. He attended Catholic boys’ boarding school in Connecticut called Canterbury, where he excelled at English and history, the subjects he loved, but almost flunked Latin, where he had no interest. Despite his poor grades, Kennedy continued to Choate, an elite Connecticut preparatory school. Although he was clearly brilliant — evidenced by the extraordinary thoughtfulness and nuance of his job on the infrequent occasions when he applied himself Kennedy stayed at best a mediocre student, preferring sports, women and practical jokes.

His Dad wrote to him through encouragement, “If I did not believe you had the goods, I’d be charitable in my attitude toward your failings … I’m not expecting too much, and I won’t be disappointed if you do not prove to be a true genius, but I think you could be a very worthwhile citizen with great understanding and judgment.”

Kennedy was actually quite bookish in high school, studying ceaselessly but not the novels his teachers assigned. He was also chronically sick during his childhood and adolescence; he suffered from severe colds, the flu, scarlet fever and much more severe undiagnosed ailments that forced him to miss months of school at a time and sometimes brought him to the verge of death.

Kennedy attended Harvard University in 1936. There, he repeated his by then well-established academic routine, excelling occasionally from the courses he enjoyed, but demonstrating only an average student on account of the omnipresent diversions of sports and girls. Handsome, charming and blessed with a luminous smile, Kennedy was incredibly popular with his Harvard classmates. His buddy Lem Billings remembered, “Jack was more fun than anybody I’ve ever known, and I believe most people who knew him felt the exact same way about him.” He wrote to Billings during his sophomore year, “that I am now able to get tail as often and as free as I want, which is a step in the right direction.”

But as an upperclassman, Kennedy Eventually grew serious about his studies and began to realize his potential. His father was appointed Ambassador to Great Britain, and on a protracted trip in 1939, Kennedy chose to research and write a senior thesis on why Britain was oblivious to fight Germany in World War II. An incisive analysis of Britain’s failures to meet the Nazi challenge, the paper was so well-received that upon Kennedy’s graduation in 1940 it had been printed as book, Why England Slept, selling over 80,000 copies. Kennedy’s dad sent him a cablegram in the wake of the book’s book: “Two things I always knew about you that you’re smart two that you’re a swell guy love daddy.”

Shortly On August 2, 1943, his ship, PT-109, was rammed by a Japanese warship and divide in two. Two sailors died and Kennedy badly hurt his spine. Hauling another injured sailor from the strap of his life vest, Kennedy led the survivors to a nearby island, where they had been rescued six days later. The episode earned him the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for “extremely heroic conduct” and a Purple Heart for the injuries he suffered.

Upon His release from the Navy Kennedy worked briefly as a reporter for Hearst Newspapers. Then in 1946, at age 29, he chose to run for the U.S. House of Representatives from a working class district of Boston, a seat being vacated by Democrat James Michael Curly. But following the glory and excitement of publishing his first book and serving in World War II, Kennedy found his job in Congress amazingly dull. Despite serving three terms, from 1946 to 1952, Kennedy remained frustrated by what he saw as stifling rules and processes that prevented a youthful, inexperienced representative by making an impact. “We were just rats at the House,” he later remembered. “Nobody paid attention to us nationwide.”

In 1952, seeking greater influence and a bigger stage, Kennedy challenged Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge for his seat in the U.S. Senate. Robert Kennedy put together what one journalist called “the most methodical, the most scientific, the most thoroughly detailed, the very complicated, the most disciplined and easily working state-wide effort in Massachusetts history – and maybe anywhere else.” In an election year in which Republicans gained control of both Houses of Congress, Kennedy nevertheless won a narrow victory, giving him considerable clout inside the Democratic Party. According to one of his aides, the decisive element in Kennedy’s success was his character: “He was the new type of political figure that people were searching for that calendar year, dignified and gentlemanly and well-educated and smart, without the atmosphere of exceptional condescension.”

Soon after his election, Kennedy met a beautiful young girl named Jacqueline Bouvier

Kennedy Continued to endure frequent illnesses throughout his career in the Senate. While recovering from 1 operation, he wrote another book, profiling eight senators who’d taken brave but unpopular stances.

Kennedy’s Bored by the Massachusetts-specific problems where he had to devote much of his time, Kennedy was drawn to the global challenges posed by the Soviet Union’s growing nuclear arsenal and the Cold War struggle for the hearts and minds of Third World states. In 1956, Kennedy was quite nearly chosen as Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson’s running mate, but was finally passed over for Estes Kefauver from Tennessee. Kennedy decided to run for president.

In the 1960 Democratic primaries, Kennedy outmaneuvered his principal opponent, Hubert Humphrey, with superior organization and fiscal resources. Selecting Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate, Kennedy confronted Vice President Richard Nixon from the general election. The election turned mostly on a series of televised national debates where Kennedy bested Nixon, a seasoned and skilled debater, by seeming relaxed, healthy and vigorous compared to his pallid and stressed opponent. On November 8, 1960, Kennedy defeated Nixon with a razor-thin perimeter to become the 35th president of the United States of America.

At age 43, he was the second youngest American president in history, second only to Theodore Roosevelt. Delivering his legendary inaugural speech on January 20, 1961, Kennedy sought to inspire all Americans to more active citizenship.

Kennedy’s greatest accomplishments during his short Tenure as president arrived in the arena of international affairs. Determined by the spirit of activism, he’d helped to ignite, Kennedy created the Peace Corps by executive order in 1961. From the end of the century, over 170,000 Peace Corps volunteers would function in 135 nations. Also in 1961, Kennedy established the Alliance for Progress to foster greater economic ties with Latin America, in hopes of relieving poverty and thwarting the spread of communism in the region.

Kennedy also On April 15, 1961, he approved a covert mission to overthrow leftist Cuban leader Fidel Castro with a group of 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban refugees. Called the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the assignment proved an unmitigated failure, causing Kennedy great humiliation.

Waves of emigration from Soviet-dominated East Germany into American ally West Germany through the town of Berlin, Khrushchev ordered the building of the Berlin Wall, which became the foremost symbol of the Cold War.

However, the greatest catastrophe of the Kennedy Government was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Discovering the Soviet Union had sent ballistic nuclear missiles into Cuba, Kennedy blockaded the island and pledged to defend the United States at any price tag. After a few of the tensest times ever, where the world seemed on the brink of nuclear annihilation, the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles in return for Kennedy’s promise not to invade Cuba and to remove American missiles from Turkey. It had been one of his proudest accomplishments.

President Kennedy’s record on national policy was fairly mixed. Taking office in the middle of a recession, he suggested sweeping income tax cuts, raising the minimum wage and instituting new social programs to improve education, healthcare and mass transit. However, hampered by lukewarm relations with Congress, Kennedy only achieved part of the agenda: a small gain in the minimum wage and watered down tax cuts.

The Most controversial domestic issues of Kennedy’s presidency was civil rights. Constrained by Southern Democrats in Congress who stayed stridently opposed to civil rights for black citizens, Kennedy offered only tepid support for civil rights reforms early in his term. But in September 1962 Kennedy delivered his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to Mississippi to utilize the National Guard and federal marshals to escort and defend civil rights activist James Meredith as he became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi on October.  Kennedy eventually sent a civil rights bill to Congress. One of the final acts of his presidency and his life, Kennedy’s bill finally passed as the landmark Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Assassination

On The following day, November 22, Kennedy, together with his wife and Texas governor John Connally rode through cheering crowds in downtown Dallas at a Lincoln Continental convertible. From an upstairs window of the Texas School Book Depository building, a 24-year-old warehouse employee named Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine with Soviet sympathies, fired upon the vehicle, hitting the president twice. Kennedy died at Parkland Memorial Hospital shortly afterwards, at age 46.

A Dallas nightclub owner named Jack Ruby assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald days later while he was being moved between jails. The death of President John F. Kennedy was an unspeakable national tragedy, and to this date lots of individuals recall with unsettling vividness the specific moment they heard of his death.

For few Former presidents is the dichotomy between scholarly and public opinion so vast. To the American people, in addition to his earliest historians, John F. Kennedy is a hero — a visionary politician who, if not for his untimely death may have prevented the political and social turmoil of the late 1960s. In public-opinion polls, Kennedy always ranks with Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln as one of the most beloved American presidents of all time. Critiquing this outpouring of adoration, many newer Kennedy scholars have derided Kennedy’s womanizing and lack of morals and contended that as a leader that he was more style than substance.

In the Long Run, Nobody can ever truly know which kind of president John F. Kennedy could have become, or different course history may have taken had he lived into old age. As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote, it was “as if Lincoln was killed six months after Gettysburg or Franklin Roosevelt at the end of 1935 or Truman prior to the Marshall Plan.” The most enduring image of Kennedy’s presidency and of his entire life, is that of Camelot, the idyllic castle of the mythical King Arthur. As his wife Jackie Kennedy said after his passing, “There will be great presidents again, and the Johnsons are wonderful, they have been fantastic to me — but there will never be another Camelot again.”

Release of Assassination Records Ordered the release of 2,800 records linked to the Kennedy assassination. The move came at the conclusion of a 25-year waiting period signed into law in 1992, which allowed the declassification of the documents provided that doing so wouldn’t hurt intelligence, military operations or foreign relations.

Trump’s launch of the Documents came on the last day he was legally permitted to do so. But he did not release All the documents, as officials from the FBI, CIA and other agencies had successfully lobbied for the Opportunity to Review especially sensitive substance for an additional 180 days.