The Editors of New Word City - John F. Kennedy

Nearly half a century has passed since the assassination of John Kennedy left Americans dazed and shattered. The traumatic - indeed, unimaginable - events of that November day in Dallas still shape our perceptions of him and his 1,000-day presidency. Its sometimes hard to separate the man from the myth.

Kennedy himself, his friends have speculated, would have scoffed at the fanciful narrative that now enshrouds him. He was, in life, a realistic, sardonic man with a biting wit and an engaging personality that made others want to follow where he led. A decorated war hero, he understood the limits of human beings and rejected the phony and pretentious. One can imagine him making some caustic remark about that eternal flame at his gravesite in Arlington, Virginia. At the same time, Kennedy valued personal relationships and was not without an idealistic streak in his self-description, an idealist without illusions.

In his tragically short administration, Kennedy stared down Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban missile crisis, inspired thousands of young Americans to join the Peace Corps in a quest to eradicate ignorance and poverty in the developing world, pushed America to put a man on the moon, increased Social Security benefits and the minimum wage, agreed to a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union, and embraced the cause of Civil Rights.

So who was this man, really? What were his flaws, and how did he deal with them? How did he lead? And why does he matter to us today, almost fifty years after his death? Thats the topic of this brief study.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, on the second floor of a clapboard house on a tree-lined street in Brookline, Massachusetts. His mother Rose was the daughter of John Francis Fitzgerald, or Honey Fitz as he was known in the Boston precincts that sent him to Congress and later made him the citys mayor. Rose attended private schools and danced at debutante balls. She spent her summers on Cape Cod and winters in Palm Beach. She attracted a host of young men, including Sir Thomas Lipton, a Scottish tea tycoon and yachtsman. But it was Joseph P. Kennedy, then a political lieutenant of her fathers, who attracted her.

Despite their dealings, or perhaps because of them, Honey Fitz didnt care for Joe Kennedy he thought the young man was too brash and banned him from the Fitzgerald house early in the seven-year courtship. Joe ended up proposing to Rose on the sidewalk. When she made it clear she would marry Joe with or without her fathers permission, Honey Fitz grudgingly gave his blessing. The couple wed on October 7, 1914.

Joe Kennedys talent for business was evident early on. At the age of twenty-five, his part in warding off a takeover of Columbia Trust Company, Bostons only Irish-owned bank, earned him the job of president, making him the youngest bank president in the United States. But that was only the beginning. A series of such successful ventures would lead him to become one of Americas wealthiest men.

The couples first son, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., was born on July 25, 1915, and Jack arrived two years later. In time, seven more siblings would follow, including the future senators Bobby and Teddy.

The family lived well, with a gracious home in the Riverdale section of New York City, a summer house on Cape Cod, and a winter retreat in Palm Beach. But Joe was a taskmaster who pressured his sons to excel in all areas of their lives, often by any means necessary. He once told a friend that he was a caterpillar; his sons would be his butterflies.

Joe Jr. was his favorite. The young man was smart, popular, a star athlete, and adored by his teachers. Brother Jack was thus spared the high expectations and pressure to excel that Joe lavished on his firstborn, but probably also felt less cherished. He spent his childhood at a succession of schools before entering Choate, where he had a reputation for pranks. Blowing up a toilet with a large firecracker was the future presidents handiwork. When the headmaster denounced him and his friends as muckers, JFK christened his gang the Choate Muckers Club.

Kennedy endured a litany of childhood illnesses - scarlet fever, mumps, chicken pox, appendicitis. He spent long periods laid up; in those days, without TV to watch or video games to play, that meant reading and daydreaming, as bored children do, and forming the basis of his future identity. When the six-foot-tall teenager weighed in at 125 pounds, his doctors suspected leukemia. In college, he acquired what would be a lifelong bad back, perhaps starting with a minor sports injury or possibly from steroid treatments for his intestinal problems. The back was immobilizing enough that he had to leave Princeton, where he was then enrolled. Later, a healthier Jack registered at Harvard, where his elder brother was winning praise as a scholar and athlete.

Jack Kennedy did well at Harvard, too, earning a spot on the varsity swim team and demonstrating his intelligence. He spent summers in Europe working with his father, who was then U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, and tooling around the Continent in his convertible. Having qualified to write an honors thesis for his degree in international affairs, Jack produced Appeasement in Munich. Renamed Why England Slept and published and promoted by his father in 1940, it became a bestseller.

Joe Kennedy, Jr. shared his fathers belief that the United States should stay out of war with Nazi Germany. But he enlisted as a pilot in the Naval Reserve anyway, perhaps mindful of widespread criticism of his fathers lack of military service. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Joe Jr. volunteered for several hazardous missions, the final one in August 1944. Scheduled to return home after completing twenty-five combat flights in Britain, he volunteered to pilot an aging bomber stuffed with explosives aimed at destroying a German rocket facility in France. Joe and his co-pilot were instructed to set the timed detonator and bail out over the English Channel, but the plane exploded before they got that far. Both men died in the blast; their bodies were never recovered.

Joe Sr. had grand plans for his namesake. Now he transferred those ambitions to his second son. JFK had a lot going for him. Smart, handsome, and charming, he had proved his valor in the war and won a medal for Gallantry in Action. Whats more, he had already published a book that gave him political gravitas.

His first courageous step was just getting into the Navy. His poor health guaranteed he could never pass a physical exam. But he was determined to go to war, and he used his fathers connections to enlist in the Naval Reserve in September 1941, just three months before Pearl Harbor.

Two years later, in 1943, Kennedy was given command of a PT (Patrol Torpedo) boat in the Pacific. It was a perilous assignment. Small and fast, the vessels were used early in the war to offset the Navys shortage of destroyers. High-powered wooden motorboats equipped with torpedoes and machine guns, PTs were used for surprise attacks against enemy warships, usually at night. In combat, they stood little chance.

Three months after Jack took command of PT-109, a Japanese destroyer rammed the boat, leaving two dead and many wounded. With their vessel slowly sinking, the survivors took a vote: Should they give up or try to swim off and fight another day? Surrender was soundly defeated, so the men set out through shark-infested waters toward the relative safety of a nearby island. Despite his slim physique and re-injured back, JFK towed one of his badly burned sailors for four hours, gripping the mans life-jacket straps in his clenched teeth. Upon reaching the island, they found neither food nor water. Kennedy towed the man to a second island, where he spelled out the word HELP with coconut shells on the beach. Six days after the attack, the crew and commander were rescued.