Bio

Early life

Born May 29,1917,located in Brookline,Massachusetts,John F. Kennedy.Son to Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy known for being a businessman/politician also Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald Kennedy worked as a philanthropist/socialite.During his childhood and teenage years he dealt with persistent health problems then later on he was dignosed with a rare endocrine disorder called Addison's disease.During June,1934 he graduatrd from a boarding high school called Choate.His older brother Joe Jr. was known for doing rebellious acts and because of this he was his older brother's shadow.He finishing 65th in a class of 112 students.He was the business manager of the school yearbook and was voted the "most likely to succeed." In 1935,Kennedyshortly attended Princeton University,but had to leave after two months due to a gastrointestinal illness.Then during September 1936 he went on to enrolled at Harvard College.In 1940,Kennedy graduated cum laude from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts in government,concentrating on international affairs.During that fall,he enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of Business and audited classes there.

Military years

During 1940,John attempted to enter the Army's Officer Candidate School,but unfortunate was disqualified because of his chronic lower back problems.After receiving that news he plan to exercised for months to straighten his back.Finally on September 24, 1941,with the help of the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence,he was a former naval attaché to Joseph Kennedy.Kennedy joined the United States Naval Reserve.In January 1942,John was assigned to the ONI field office at Headquarters,Sixth Naval District,in Charleston,South Carolina.During October 10,he was promoted to lieutenant junior grade.His first command was Pt-101 from December 7, 1942, until February 23, 1943.The boat was used for training while John was an instructor at Melville.On August 12, 1944, his older brother, Joe Jr.,a Navy pilot,was killed after he volunteered for a special and hazardous air mission.His plane that was a explosive-laden was abolished when the plane's bombs detonated to early as the aircraft was flying over the English Channel.March,1,1945,this was when John retired from the Navy Reserve because of physical disability and was honorably discharged with the full rank of lieutenant.Then later on he was asked how he became a war hero,John joked:"It was easy.They cut my PT boat in half.John Military awards are Navy and Marine Corps Medal,Purple Heart,American Defense Service Medal,American Campaign Medal,Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with three stars,World War II Victory Medal.

Politics Age

his eldest brother died in 1944.He was a family's political standard-bearer,and he was tapped by his father to seek the Presidency.Because of his death the task was falling upon to young Kennedy.During 1946 he ran for Congress with his father financing and running his campaign,John won the Democratic with 12 percent of the vote,defeating ten other candidates.Kennedy defeated his Republican opponent in the general election, taking 73 percent of the vote. Along with Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy, Kennedy was one of several World War II veterans first elected to Congress that year.He was in the house for six years,joining the influential Education and Labor Committee and the Veterans' Affairs Committee.John supported the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952,which required Comminists to register with government,and he deplored the "Loss of China."As early as 1949, Kennedy began preparing to run for the Senate in 1952 against Republican three-term incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. Joseph Kennedy again financed and managed his son's candidacy, while John Kennedy's younger brother Robert Kennedy emerged as an important member of the campaign. In the presidential election, General Dwight D. Eisenhower carried Massachusetts by a margin of 208,000 votes, but Kennedy defeated Lodge by 70,000 votes for the Senate seat.The following year, he married Jacqueline Bouvier.Two years later, he was forced to undergo a painful operation on his back. While recovering from the surgery, Jack wrote another best-selling book, “Profiles in Courage,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957.

Journey to Presidency

in 1956, Kennedy announced his candidacy for president on January 2, 1960.People were questing his youth and experience but his charisma and eloquence earned him numerous supporters.His greatest obstacle to winning the nomination may have been his religion, as many Americans held anti-Catholic attitudes, but his vocal defense of the separation of church and state helped to defuse the issue. His religion also helped him win a devoted following among many Catholic voters. In the general election, Kennedy faced a difficult battle against his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, a two-term vice president under the popular Dwight D. Eisenhower.Offering a young, energetic alternative to Nixon and the status quo, Kennedy benefited from his performance.At the beginning of fall general election campaign Nixon held a six-point lead in the polls.In September and October, Kennedy squared off with Nixon in the first televised presidential debates in U.S. history.John won this because Nixon had a sore,injured leg,and his "five o'clock shadow" making him look tense and uncomfortable and john appeared relexed.Kennedy's campaign gained momentum after the first debate, and he pulled slightly ahead of Nixon in most polls.On November 8, Kennedy defeated Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the 20th century.In the national popular vote, by most accounts, Kennedy led Nixon by just two-tenths of one percent, while in the Electoral College, he won 303 votes to Nixon's 219.Kennedy became the youngest person ever elected to the presidency, though Theodore Roosevelt was slightly younger when he took office after William McKinley's death in 1901.

Presidency

John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president at noon on January 20, 1961. In his inaugural address he spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens, famously saying: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."John had called on his fellow Americans to work together in the pursuit of progress and the elimination of poverty,but also in battleto win the ongoing Cold War against communism around the world.Kennedy brought to the White House a contrast in organization compared to the decision-making structure of former-General Eisenhower; and he wasted no time in scrapping Eisenhower's methods.Kennedy preferred the organizational structure of a wheel with all the spokes leading to the president.Much to the chagrin of his economic advisors who wanted him to reduce taxes, Kennedy quickly agreed to a balanced budget pledge. This was needed in exchange for votes to expand the membership of the House Rules Committee in order to give the Democrats a majority in setting the legislative agenda.Kennedy focused on immediate and specific issues facing the administration, and quickly voiced his impatience with pondering of deeper meanings.During the summer of 1962, Kennedy had a secret taping system set up in the White House, most likely to aid his future memoir. It recorded many conversations with Kennedy and his Cabinet members, including those in relation to the "Cuban Missile Crisis".

Foreign policy

An early crisis in the foreign affairs arena occurred in April 1961, when Kennedy approved the plan to send 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles in an amphibious landing at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Intended to spur a rebellion that would overthrow the communist leader Fidel Castro, the mission ended in failure, with nearly all of the exiles captured or killed. That June, Kennedy met with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna to discuss the city of Berlin, which had been divided after World War II between Allied and Soviet control. Two months later, East German troops began erecting a wall to divide the city. Kennedy sent an army convoy to reassure West Berliners of U.S. support, and would deliver one of his most famous speeches in West Berlin in June 1963.Kennedy clashed again with Khrushchev in October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis. After learning that the Soviet Union was constructing a number of nuclear and long-range missile sites in Cuba that could pose a threat to the continental United States, Kennedy announced a naval blockade of Cuba. The tense standoff lasted nearly two weeks before Khrushchev agreed to dismantle Soviet missile sites in Cuba in return for America’s promise not to invade the island and the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey and other sites close to Soviet borders. In July 1963, Kennedy won his greatest foreign affairs victory when Khrushchev agreed to join him and Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in signing a nuclear test ban treaty. In Southeast Asia, however, Kennedy’s desire to curb the spread of communism led him to escalate U.S. involvement in the conflict in Vietnam, even as privately he expressed his dismay over the situation.

Space policy

The Apollo program was conceived early in 1960, during the Eisenhower administration, as a follow-up to Project Mercury, to be used as a shuttle to an Earth-orbital space station, flights around the Moon, or landing on it. While NASA went ahead with planning for Apollo, funding for the program was far from certain, given Eisenhower's ambivalent attitude to manned spaceflight. As senator, Kennedy had been opposed to the space program and wanted to terminate it. In constructing his Presidential administration, Kennedy elected to retain Eisenhower's last science advisor Jerome Wiesner as head of the President's Science Advisory Committee. Wiesner was strongly opposed to manned space exploration, having issued a report highly critical of Project Mercury.Kennedy was turned down by seventeen candidates for NASA administrator before the post was accepted by James E. Webb, an experienced Washington insider who served President Harry S. Truman as budget director and undersecretary of state. Webb proved to be adept at obtaining the support of Congress, the President, and the American people. Kennedy also persuaded Congress to amend the National Aeronautics and Space Act to allow him to delegate his chairmanship of the National Aeronautics and Space Council to the Vice President,both because of the knowledge of the space program Johnson gained in the Senate working for the creation of NASA, and to help keep the politically savvy Johnson occupied. In Kennedy's January 1961 State of the Union address, he had suggested international cooperation in space. Khrushchev declined, as the Soviets did not wish to reveal the status of their rocketry and space capabilities. Early in his presidency, Kennedy was poised to dismantle the manned space program, but postponed any decision out of deference to Johnson, who had been a strong supporter of the space program in the Senate. Kennedy's advisors speculated that a Moon flight would be prohibitively expensive, and he was considering plans to dismantle the Apollo program due to its cost.On November 21, 1962, in a cabinet meeting with NASA administrator Webb and other officials, Kennedy explained that the Moon shot was important for reasons of international prestige, and that the expense was justified. Johnson assured him that lessons learned from the space program had military value as well. Costs for the Apollo program were expected to reach $40 billion. In a September 1963 speech before the United Nations, Kennedy urged cooperation between the Soviets and Americans in space, specifically recommending that Apollo be switched to "a joint expedition to the Moon". Khrushchev again declined, and the Soviets did not commit to a manned Moon mission until 1964. On July 20, 1969, almost six years after Kennedy's death, Apollo 11 landed the first manned spacecraft on the Moon.

JFK Death

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 pm Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, while on a political trip to Texas to smooth over frictions in the Democratic Party between liberals Ralph Yarborough and Don Yarborough (no relation) and conservative John Connally. Traveling in a presidential motorcade through downtown Dallas, he was shot once in the back, the bullet exiting via his throat, and once in the head. Kennedy was taken to Parkland Hospital for emergency medical treatment, where he was pronounced dead 30 minutes later; he was 46 years old and had been in office for 1,036 days. Lee Harvey Oswald, an order filler at the Texas School Book Depository from which the shots were suspected to have been fired, was arrested for the murder of police officer J.D. Tippit, and was subsequently charged with Kennedy's assassination. He denied shooting anyone, claiming he was a patsy, and was killed by Jack Ruby on November 24, before he could be prosecuted. Ruby was arrested and convicted for the murder of Oswald. Ruby successfully appealed his conviction and death sentence but became ill and died of cancer on January 3, 1967, while the date for his new trial was being set. By executive order, President Johnson created the Warren Commission—chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren—to investigate the assassination, which concluded that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy, and that Oswald was not part of any conspiracy. The results of this investigation are disputed by many. The assassination proved to be a pivotal moment in U.S. history because of its impact on the nation, and the ensuing political repercussions. A 2004 Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, while 74% thought that there had been a cover-up. A Gallup Poll in mid-November 2013, showed 61% believed in a conspiracy, and only 30% thought that Oswald did it alone. In 1979, the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that it believed "that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy." In 2002, historian Carl M. Brauer concluded that the public's "fascination with the assassination may indicate a psychological denial of Kennedy's death, a mass wish...to undo it."A Requiem Mass was held for Kennedy at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle on November 25, 1963. Afterwards, Kennedy was interred in a small plot, (20 by 30 ft.), in Arlington National Cemetery. Over a period of three years (1964–1966), an estimated 16 million people visited his grave. On March 14, 1967, Kennedy's remains were moved to a permanent burial plot and memorial at the cemetery. The funeral was officiated by Father John J. Cavanaugh. It was from this memorial that the graves of both Robert and Ted Kennedy were modeled. The honor guard at Kennedy's graveside was the 37th Cadet Class of the Irish Army. Kennedy was greatly impressed by the Irish Cadets on his last official visit to Ireland, so much so that Jackie Kennedy requested the Irish Army to be the honor guard at her husband's funeral. Kennedy's wife Jacqueline, and their two deceased minor children, were later buried with him. His brother, Robert was buried nearby in June 1968. In August 2009, his brother, Ted was also buried near his two brothers. John F. Kennedy's grave is lit with an "Eternal Flame". Kennedy and William Howard Taft are the only two U.S. presidents buried at Arlington. According to the JFK Library, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death", by Alan Seeger "was one of John F. Kennedy's favorite poems and he often asked his wife to recite it".