On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin’s bullet as his car wound through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; he was the youngest to die.
Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917; he was a descendant of Irish Catholics who had immigrated to American in the 19th century. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was a belligerent businessman who became a multimillionaire and ambassador to Great Britain. Joseph and his wife Rose had nine children, the second oldest being John. John was named in honor of Rosa’s late father, John Francis Fitzgerald, the well liked Boston mayor. John was not a healthy child. He suffered from the whooping cough, measles, chicken pox, and the scarlet fever. Fortunately, he recovered from all his illnesses. In 1936, he graduated from the Choate boarding school in Connecticut and moved on to Harvard, where his older brother, Joe, was studying. There he was involved in football but ruptured a disk in his spine one day while playing. He recovered from this accident but his back continued to bother him. After graduating form Harvard, John and Joe joined the Navy. Joe became a flyer, while John made Lieutenant and assigned to the South Pacific as commander of a patrol torpedo boat, the PT-10. On the night of August 2, 1943 a Japanese destroyer hit Lt. Kennedy’s boat. He once again injured his back while being thrown off the boat. However, he managed to get his crew onto the shore of an island nearby. For his heroism and bravery he received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal when he returned home, in 1945. Soon after he found out that his brother Joe’s plane blew up during a dangerous mission in Europe. In 1946, he ran for a seat in the Massachusetts eleventh congressional district and won. This was the beginning of John’s political career. John F. Kennedy served as a Democrat for three full terms in the House of Representatives, from 1947-1953. He was then elected as an U.S. senator in 1953. The next year John married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, by whom he had three children: Caroline, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., and Patrick Bouvier (who died in infancy). During his congressional terms he generally supported President Harry S. Truman’s foreign policies, he criticized what he considered the administration’s weak stand against the Communist Chinese. Kennedy continued to advocate a strong, anti-Communist foreign policy throughout his career. John was becoming a popular politician and was almost picked to run for Vice President in 1956. Having been defeated he decided to run for President in the next election with the help of Lyndon B. Johnson as his Vice President. In 1957 Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for a book he had written earlier entitled “ Profiles in Courage.” On July 13, 1960, the Democratic Party nominated John F. Kennedy as its candidate for President. At the election on November 8th Kennedy beat Republican Richard Nixon in a very close race. At the age of forty- three, Kennedy was the first president born in the 20th century and the youngest president ever elected. In addition, he was the first Roman Catholic President.
