John Fitzgerald Kennedy was
born in Brookline, Mass., on May 29, 1917.
His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was ambassador
to Great Britain from 1937 to 1940. Kennedy
was graduated from Harvard University in
1940 and joined the navy the next year. He
became skipper of a PT boat that was sunk
in the Pacific by a Japanese destroyer. Although
given up for lost, he swam to a safe island,
towing an injured enlisted man.
After recovering from a war-aggravated spinal
injury, Kennedy entered politics in 1946
and was elected to Congress. In 1952, he
ran against Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.,
of Massachusetts, and won. Kennedy was married
on Sept. 12, 1953, to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier,
by whom he had three children: Caroline,
John Fitzgerald, Jr. (died in a 1999 plane
crash), and Patrick Bouvier (died in infancy).
In 1957 Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for
a book he had written earlier, Profiles in
Courage.After strenuous primary battles,
Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination
on the first ballot at the 1960 Los Angeles
convention. With a plurality of only 118,574
votes, he carried the election over Vice
President Richard M. Nixon and became the
first Roman Catholic president.
Kennedy brought to the White House the dynamic
idea of a “New Frontier” approach
in dealing with problems at home, abroad,
and in the dimensions of space. Out of his
leadership in his first few months in office
came the 10-year Alliance for Progress to
aid Latin America, the Peace Corps, and accelerated
programs that brought the first Americans
into orbit in the race in space.
Failure of the U.S.-supported Cuban invasion
in April 1961 led to the entrenchment of
the Communist-backed Castro regime, only
90 mi from United States soil. When it became
known that Soviet offensive missiles were
being installed in Cuba in 1962, Kennedy
ordered a naval “quarantine” of
the island and moved troops into position
to eliminate this threat to U.S. security.
The world seemed on the brink of a nuclear
war until Soviet premier Khrushchev ordered
the removal of the missiles.
A sudden “thaw” or the appearance
of one, in the cold war came with the agreement
with the Soviet Union on a limited test-ban
treaty signed in Moscow on Aug. 6, 1963.
In his domestic policies, Kennedy's proposals
for medical care for the aged and aid to
education were defeated, but on minimum wage,
trade legislation, and other measures he
won important victories. Widespread racial
disorders and demonstrations led to Kennedy's
proposing sweeping civil rights legislation.
As his third year in office drew to a close,
he also recommended an $11-billion tax cut
to bolster the economy. Both measures were
pending in Congress when Kennedy, looking
forward to a second term, journeyed to Texas
for a series of speeches.
While riding in an automobile procession
in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, he was shot to
death by an assassin firing from an upper
floor of a building. Jack Ruby, owner of
a striptease club, killed the alleged assassin,
Lee Harvey Oswald, two days later in the
Dallas City jail.
At 46 years of age, Kennedy became the fourth
president to be assassinated and the eighth
to die in office. |
