John Fitzgerald Kennedy, known as JFK, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts
on May 29, 1917. His father, Joseph Kennedy, Sr., was a wealthy
investor and a demanding father who expected his sons to be politically
ambitious. When JFK was ten, his family moved to New York, and
when it came time to enter high school, he was sent to Choate,
a prestigious Connecticut boarding school. He became very popular
with his peers there, but managed only mediocre grades. He had
a similar experience at Harvard, which he attended between 1936
and 1940, while his father was serving as Ambassador to Great
Britain and the tensions in Europe that would eventually lead to
World War II mounted. In correspondence to the U.S., Joe Sr.
advocated support for the British policy of appeasing Hitler so
as to avoid a second world war. On a personal level, JFK felt
continuously overshadowed by his older brother, Joseph Kennedy,
Jr., who was regarded as their father's favorite.
World War II broke out despite the practice of appeasement,
and America entered the war after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December
7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy," as Franklin Delano
Roosevelt described it. JFK joined the Navy, where he eventually
became the captain of a PT boat in the South Pacific. He became
a hero for saving his crew after his boat was rammed by a Japanese
destroyer in August 1943. A year later, however, his brother Joe
Jr. was killed flying a mission over Europe. When the war ended
in 1945, JFK became the vehicle for his father's ambitions. Backed
by Joseph Sr.'s immense financial and political clout, JFK was
elected to the House of Representatives from Massachusetts in
November 1946. He served in the House for six years, during which
time the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union
came to dominate world politics. At home, paranoia about Communism
enabled a maverick Senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy
to conduct witch hunts for Communists and Communist sympathizers,
a practice that became known as "McCarthyism." JFK was frequently
ill during these years. He was diagnosed with Addison's Disease,
a potentially fatal condition, in 1948, but cortisone treatments
enabled him to fight the disease, and his condition was never
revealed to the general public.
In 1952, JFK ran successfully for the U.S. Senate from
Massachusetts, in a year that saw Dwight Eisenhower elected president.
The next year JFK married Jacqueline Bouvier, a beautiful and
cultured young woman who would become one of the most famous First
Ladies in history. JFK was now one of the Democratic Party's rising
stars. He spent 1955 and 1956 writing Profiles in Courage (evidence
suggests, however, that JFK's speechwriter, Theodore Sorensen,
actually wrote much of the book), which was a best-seller and
won a 1957 Pulitzer Prize. In 1956, JFK was nearly selected a
the Democrats' Vice-Presidential candidate. Four years later,
with the end of Eisenhower's second term, JFK's time had come:
he won the 1960 Democratic nomination and defeated Richard Nixon
for the presidency.
Early in his presidency, JFK butted heads with the Soviet
Union and its volatile leader, Nikita Khrushchev. After a U.S.-backed
invasion of communist Cuba in April 1961 ended in disaster at
the Bay of Pigs, Khrushchev concluded that JFK's administration
was weak. In autumn 1962, the Soviet Union began shipping nuclear missiles
to Cuba, where they could be aimed at the United States from just
a few hundred miles away. When JFK found out about these missiles,
he imposed a naval quarantine on Cuba and pondered an invasion.
For two weeks, the world was on the edge of nuclear war, until
Khrushchev finally agreed to remove the missiles, ending the crisis.
Within the larger context of the fight against Communism, which
played such a large role in defining American rhetoric and policy
throughout the 1950s and 1960's, JFK increasingly involved the
U.S. in a struggle to defend democratic South Vietnam against Communist
North Vietnam. This confrontation would eventually escalate into
the Vietnam
War, one of the least successful and most costly
military campaigns in U.S. history.
On the domestic front, JFK founded the Peace Corps, a
volunteer organization that sent young Americans overseas to work
in Third World countries. He backed investment in Latin America through
the "Alliance for Progress," and joined with Khrushchev to sign
a treaty limiting nuclear testing. At home, many of his policy
initiatives stalled in Congress, but he intervened quickly to prevent
unfair business practices by the steel industry, and offered cautious
support for the rising Civil
Rights Movement. Throughout his presidency, JFK
managed to create a public image immensely attractive to much
of America. He was the first "television President;" with his
charm and good looks he took full advantage of that medium to capture
and engage the hearts of Americans (indeed, the relationship JFK
shared with America has often been referred to as a love affair).
JFK inspired in many a powerful optimism and idealism, and he
seemed poised to carry the U.S. out of trying times. His life
and presidency were cut short, however, by an assassin's bullet
on November 22, 1963, plunging the country into mourning. JFK's
death was undeniably tragic, but it had the effect of cementing
and amplifying his legacy. Though his moments of presidential
brilliance were tempered by instances of uncertainty, particularly
in reference to the Civil Rights Movement and the Cuban Missile
Crisis, JFK continues to be revered and loved. How much more
he might have accomplished, in a United States that desperately
needed unifying, is one of history's most tantalizing questions.
